A tabu search heuristic for the multiprocessor scheduling problem with sequence dependent setup times

This article deals with the problem of scheduling n jobs on m identical parallel processors with the objective of minimizing the total execution time (makespan). A new three-phase heuristic s proposed for solving this problem. An initial phase constructs a starting solution which is improved, in a second phase, by means of a tabu search method. A final phase follows attempting a further improvement in the current solution. Numerical rests in a series of randomly generated problems indicate that the proposed method outperforms a previous heuristic, Comparisons with an exact procedure attest that our method produces good-quality solutions in reasonable running times.