Combinative method using simulated annealing and tabu

search for solving resource leveling problem.

Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang

Department of Electronic Engineering, Southern Taiwan University

Tainan, TAIWAN
E-mail: M9435204@webmail.stut.edu.tw
Abstract. In this research I have introduced a new heuristic approach combing Tabu search (TS) with
Simulated annealing (SA) which is called TSSA to solve resource leveling problem. The problems used in
this research are the activity scheduling applications solved under resource limitations (resource upper
limit and the unit cost of the resource) and activity constraints (maximal time interval and minimal time
interval between each two activities). K. Neumann and J. Zimmermann (1999) proposed an algorithm in
which each activity is given an optimal start time by using a priority rule, and after that, the activity is
arranged into the schedule with that start time. However, the proposed algorithm of K. Neumann and J.
Zimmermann did not adjust the start times of activities that have already been arranged into the
schedule. Therefore, improvements have been made in this aspect in this research.

Keywords: resource leveling, Tabu search (TS), Simulated annealing (SA), maximal time interval,
minimal time interval.
1 Introduction
In recent years, increasing competition has
been seen among corporations with the
development of expanding globalization. As a
result, how to be more competitive in the global
market is an important issue to many enterprises.
For many manufacturers, the employment of
better production scheduling tools means a direct
and effective way to control cost expenditure. A
good production scheduling tool should take into
account a lot of production limitations, including
costs, resource loadings, etc.
In this research, a heuristic approach has been
proposed to control both the costs and resource
loadings according to given standards and
achieve resource leveling as well. The relations
between these three goals are discussed as
follows. First, when we consider about the
leveling of resource, it is of significant
importance that all the resource should be used in
an effective way, because in a sense, more
resources means more costs. Therefore, how to
use the resource most effectively so that best
production performance and highest profits can
be achieved is the No.1 item that should be taken
into consideration. In addition, attention should
be attached to avoid extra cost expenditure, for
example, the extra cost occurred when resource is
overloaded. Thus, the leveling of resource is
equivalent to the effective utilization of resource.
Second, resource has its own capacity, below
which the unit cost of production is fixed and
 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.
above which the unit cost rises as the overloading
occurs, in which case the profit would be
impaired with the increased cost. To solve this
problem, importance has been attached to the
resource capacity in this research in order to
allocate jobs and make adjustments under the
circumstance that all resource should not be
overloaded and all jobs are not disturbed in their
sequence, which can consequently reduce the
extra cost from resource overloading.
Finally, as for the control of costs, efforts have
been made on finding such a time when the costs
are lowest and the resource value can be
maximized. Thus a time is set to be the starting
time of a job, so that even new jobs are added, the
resource costs will not significantly increase. If
attention is only paid to the leveling of resource,
resource capacity may be transgressed, or costs
may increase. Therefore, how to balance and
satisfy the above three goals simultaneously
become the core of this research. Since the
processing sequence of jobs must be taken into
account, maximum and maximum time lags are
set to different jobs in this research in order to
restrict the starting time of jobs.
In K. Neumann and J. Zimmermann (1999) the
authors study the problem of resources leveling in
project scheduling, where activities are subject to
minimum and maximum time lags and explicit
resource constraints, i.e., there is a maximum
resource availability for each resource type and
time period. The time horizon is fixed. The
authors propose priority rule heuristics for this
problem with a variety of different objective
functions. However, in the above literature,
attention has only been paid to the jobs to be
scheduled, and no adjustment is ever made to the
already scheduled jobs. But actually, after all the
activities have been allocated into the schedule,
improvements can still be made upon the
schedule. Therefore, in this research, the
algorithm proposed in the literature is used to
create the initial solutions. After that, Tabu search
and Simulated annealing are combined together
in TSSA to perform the search of optimal
solutions. It is known that the features of Tabu
search is that it will not perform search to the
same area, therefore, it is able to jump out of the
local minimum deadlock. Since in the Simulated
annealing algorithm, the same area will be
inevitably searched over and over again, Tabu
search is combined with Simulated annealing to
avoid such disadvantage, and the combined new
algorithm is applied to the problem of resource
leveling. More details about TSSA will be given
in 3.
The composition of this paper is: 2 gives an
introduction of the research background, 3
describes the research approach, 4 is the
simulation and result analysis of the experiment,
and finally 5 contains the conclusion and future
work.
2 Literature review
2.1 The overview of resource leveling
problem (RLP)
[1]
In K. Neumann and J. Zimmermann
proposed an approach using dependent
adjustment time windows between activities to
allocate the activities into the schedule. In their
research, the earliest start time and latest start
time of an activity are updated repeatedly, aiming
at reducing the total float time over and over
 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.
again. Meanwhile, all activities are allocated into
the schedule at its optimal start time. My research
is carried out based on the above literature. First
we carry out the algorithm proposed in that
literature to be initial solution, then use the
proposed TSSA approach in this paper to
improve the initial solution. By using TSSA
approach, successfully improve the optimal start
time of each activity.
2.2 Tabu search
The basic form of Tabu search (TS) is founded
on ideas proposed by Glover in 1986. TS is a
meta-heuristic that guides a local heuristic search
procedure to explore the solution space beyond
local optimality. Tabu search starts from an initial
solution and moves at each iteration from initial
solution to its best neighbor, until a stopping
criterion is satisfied. The most important is that
the cost of neighbor is not necessarily less than
initial cost. There are two main components of
TS. The first one is a search that uses an
operation called “move” to define the
neighborhood of any given solution. Another
main component of TS is its use of “memory”,
which creates a more flexible search behavior
Memory-based strategies are therefore the
hallmark of Tabu search approaches. The basic
concepts of Tabu search as shown in these M.
Ben-Daya [2] Nai-Hsin Pan [3], Taicir Loukil [4].
2.3 Simulated annealing
The SA is a local search method that finds its
inspiration in the physical annealing process
studied in statistical mechanics. An SA algorithm
repeats an iterative neighbor generations
procedure and follows search directions that
improve the objective function value. While
exploring solution space, the SA method offers
the possibility to accept worse neighbor solutions
in a controlled manner in order to escape from
local minima. More precisely, in each iteration,
for a current solution x characterized by an
objective function value f ( x ) , a neighbor x  is
selected from the neighborhood of
x denoted N ( x ) , and defined as the set of all its
immediate neighbors. For each move, the
objective difference   f ( x )  f ( x ) is
evaluated. For minimizationx problems
replaces x whenever   0 . Otherwise, x
could also be accepted with a probability
P  e (  ) / T . The acceptance probability is
compared to a number yrandom  [0,1] generated
randomly and x is accepted whenever
P  yrandom .The factors that influence acceptance
probability are the degree of objective function
value degradation  (smaller degradations
induce greater acceptance probabilities) and the
parameter T called temperature (higher values of
T give higher acceptance probability). The
temperature can be controlled by a cooling
scheme specifying how it should be progressively
reduced to make the procedure more selective as
the search progresses to neighborhoods of good
solutions. There exist theoretical schedules
guaranteeing asymptotic convergence toward the
optimal solution. They require however infinite
computing time. In practice, much simpler and
finite computing time schedules are preferred
even if they do not guarantee an optimal solution.
A typical finite time implementation of SA
consists in decreasing the temperature T in S
steps, starting from an initial value and using
attenuation factor  (0    1) . The initial
temperature T0 is supposed to be high enough to
allow acceptance of any new neighbor proposed

in the first step. In each step s, the procedure
generates a fixed number of neighbor solutions
N sol and evaluates them using the current
temperature value Ts   sT0 . The whole process
is commonly called ‘‘cooling chain’’ or also
‘‘markov chain’’. Adaptation of SA to an
optimization problem consists in defining its
specific components: a solution representation of
the problem, a method for the objective function
value calculation, a neighbor
mechanism for solution space exploration and a
cooling scheme including stopping criteria. The
basic concepts of Simulated annealing as shown
[5]
in these Rachid Chelouah , T.K Varadharajan .
3 Building the TSSA for arranging the
RLP
3.1 Problem definition
This research is carried out for activities
scheduling. First, we assume that there are N
activities to be scheduled, then activities network
is introduced to describe the relations between
activities. The activities are indexed from 0 to
n  1 , representing the start time as well as the
completion time of the schedule, respectively.
The processing time of each activity is greater
than zero Pj  0 , and S j  0 , and the start time
of the whole schedule is zero S0  0 , which
means the schedule is started at time 0. Sn 1
defines the schedule duration or makespan. It is
assumed that there’s a fixed given length d ,
thus the constraint Sn 1  d can be obtained.
Now we allocate n+2 nodes ranging from 0 to
n+1 into the activities network. It is assumed that
a fixed distance d
min
ij
is set between each two
activities, meaning the start time
Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.
activity and the start time j of another activity
should be keep d
min
ij
away from each other, i.e.
S j  Si  d min
ij
. On the other hand, d ij
max
defines
the maximum distance of the start times of two
activities, meaning the start times of two
activities cannot exceed d ij , i.e. S j  Si  d ijmax .
max
In this research, the distance of the start times of
activities are defined by d ijmin and d ijmax ,
positive numbers representing minimum time
generation lags while negative numbers representing
maximum time lags. All the activities within the
activities network must be restricted by these
restrictions. Therefore, the start times are very
[6]
important to the whole scheduling, since all the
activities must be restricted by these rules in
order to be allocated into the schedule. Under
such scheduling rule, it is likely that loadings
would become uneven and the cost would
increase accordingly. Another case is that some
activities cannot be allocated into the schedule
within a limited period of time. In K. Neumann
and J. Zimmermann (1999), careful consideration
has been made upon the allocation of activities,
but it only focused on the unscheduled activities
and calculated when would be the optimal start
times of those unscheduled activities. No efforts
have been made on the already scheduled
activities. Therefore, in this research, an
optimization procedure is proposed to make
adjustments after all activities are scheduled. All
these adjustments are made according to the
restrictions of d ijmin and d ijmax . More details will
be provided in the following. This research
employs a single resource where K is used to
represent the resource. Let us first suppose that
the capacity of available resource Rk  0 , and if
activity j is allocated to resource K , it will cost
i of one a capacity of rjk  0 , satisfying 0  rjk  Rk . In

other words, rjk is supposed to be a constant
satisfying the above restriction. Now we want to
create a schedule S , whose t  0,1,..., d  1 . All
activities should be allocated into 0  t  d .
Resource profile is used to represent the loading
per unit time within the production period. Three
objective functions in the following are used to
calculate the loading per unit time of the resource
profile. The results got will be considered the
evidence of determining the start time of an
activity. The general resource leveling problem
can then be formulated as follows:
min f ( R )
subject to S j  Si  d ij (1)
S0  0 (2)
Sn  1  d (3)
The basic concepts of resource constrained
project as shown in these Schwindt C , Arno
Sprecher[8], Younis, M.A[9], Seibert, J.E[10].
3.2 Different classes of objective functions
Here is some brief introduction about the
three objective functions used in this research.
The first objective function relates to the
usage of resource per unit time. In (4), Ck  0
represents the unit cost of resource K, the goal of
this function is to minimize the sum of the
maximum resource costs per period. This
function reflects the resource
problem.
k
f ( R )   Ck max r (t ) k
s
(4)
k 1 t  0,1,... d 1
The second objective function is used to
Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.
calculation the error, which refers to the deviation
between the initially given capacity of the
resource lk  0 and the actual loading per unit
time of the resource. lk can also be called the
average loading of resource or the capacity of
resource. Objective value can be positive or
negative. When Objective value is negative, it
means that no overload occurs during this unit
time. Therefore, in this research, attention is
mainly paid to the unit time t where Objective
value is positive. The value of function is the
smaller the better, which means the control of
resource K is well performed.
k d 1
f ( R )   Ck  [rks (t )  lk ] (5)
k 1 t 0
The third objective function aims at
minimizing the difference between resource
usage at day t and resource usage at day t-1. In
real life, the leveling of resource is extremely
important, therefore the value of this function
[7]
should also be the less the smaller the better. If
this function value is smaller, it means resource K
is well utilized for every unit time.
k d
f ( R )   Ck  [ rks (t )  rks (t  1)] (6)
k 1 t 0
The above functions have been extensively
discussed in many literatures and are proved to be
effective. Accordingly, the three functions are
introduced in this research, too, to evaluate the
schedules. In addition, the evaluation performed
by this research does not depend only on a single
objective function, but get the objective value of
the three functions; hence three objective
investment
functions are combined to form one objective
function by the weights, in order to obtain a
well-balanced schedule. The weights are given by
problem definitions. However there are many
objective functions in production scheduling, how
 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.

to select the objective functions depend on be presented by:

different problem definitions.
ES j  max ( d 0 j , max ( Si  d ij )) (8)
3.3 Time interval of activity
LS j  min( d  d j , n 1 , min( Si  d ji )) (9)

More details are to be discussed about activity. 3.4 Priority rules

First, it should be noted that each activity

In the algorithm proposed by K. Neumann, it
contains many elements, for example, processing
depends on the priority rule to allocate activities
time, quantity, start time and completion time.
into the schedule. The priority rule of selecting
The start time and completion time is divided into
the next activity is based on both Latest Start
the earliest start time ES j , the latest start
Time and Greatest Resource Demand. To be more
time LS j , the earliest completion time ES j , and
detailed, first calculate the latest start time of all
the latest completion time LS j . And it is defined
activities, find out the activity with the smallest
that:
LST. In the case that more than one activity have

LS j  S j  EC j for t  0,...d  1 (7) the same smallest LST, more calculation will be
performed on these activities using GRD and the
Therefore, the total float time activity with the largest GRD will be selected as
is TFj  LS j  ES j  LC j  EC j . In this research,
the final candidate to be allocated into the
the activities that enable TFj  0 are called
schedule.
critical activities, because the positions of these LST Latest Start Time
activities cannot be changed from the beginning
extiu (i )  min LSi (10)
of the production period. As a result, these iu

activities should be allocated into the schedule GRD Greatest Resource Demand
immediately, therefore, the start times of these k

critical activities should be S j  ES j . In extiu (i )  max

iu
pi  rik (11)
k 1

reference Resource leveling for projects with

[1]
schedule-dependent time windows , the
algorithm proposed by the author re-defines 3.5 TSSA algorithm
the ES j and LS j of an activity j after the activity
is allocated into the schedule by considering the
In this chapter, the TSSA approach proposed in
work of its neighboring activities (predecessor
this paper will be described in details. It is known
activities and successor activities). Its target is to
that tabu search is a heuristic with memories, in
obtain a smaller TFj , and make the activities into
that searched paths are kept in the tabu list. In this
critical activities, so that the activities can be
way, searched paths will not be searched again.
allocated into the schedule immediately. When
On the other hand, simulated annealing approach
more and more activities are allocated into the
employs a temperature-reducing process in which
schedule, the TFj of the unscheduled activities
neighboring solutions worse than the current
become smaller and smaller. Such approach can
solution can be accepted by a certain ratio for a
 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.

specific temperature. At a high temperature, such
ratio is high; while with the temperature
reduction, the ratio also becomes lower. Such
feature gives simulated annealing a stronger
ability to carry out the global search. However, as
the same searching area may be searched many
times, the search efficiency is hampered. Hence,
in this research, TSSA algorithm is proposed to
combine the advantages of simulated annealing
and tabu search. Simulated annealing is employed
at first to search the optimal solution, which the
searched areas are stored into the tabu list to
avoid repeated searches. In the meanwhile, the
advantage of simulated annealing, that
neighboring solutions worse than the current
solution may also be accepted, is preserved,
which gives TSSA a strong search ability.

Start
PART 1

Generate an initial solution and calculate the objective value, and set initial

Store the initial solution to tabu list and store the objective value to the best
objective value
PART 6

End Yes T < 0.005

No
PART 2

Generate a neighborhood solution

If new solution is not tabu

No

Yes

Calculate the objective value of the new solution. Iteration + 1

If new objective value better

No than the best objective value

PART 4 PART 3
Yes
No
Exp (-△V/T) > random [0,1] Store the new solution and objective value
Yes

Iteration times bigger than given max

times No

Yes
PART 5

Current T * cooling rate, set iteration times = 0

Figure 1 Flow chart of TSSA algorithm

 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.
The procedure of TSSA algorithm proposed in
this research can be described as follows:
PART 1 : Initial solution: an initial solution is
obtained by using the algorithm proposed K.
Neumann and J. Zimmermann (1999) of which a
brief introduction will be given in the following.
The algorithm of literature can be largely divided
into two parts: Step 1, Step 2, Step 1 is the
initialization. First, get the sequence relations
between all activities, calculate the distances
d min
ij
and d
max
ij
between the activities, then
initiate the ES j and LS j of all activities, and
check if any activity satisfies the
condition TFj  0 . If some activities do satisfy
the condition, these activities will be allocated
immediately, and the updating of resource profile
will be performed accordingly. Step 2 is the
scheduling of activities. First, select the next
activity (activity j ) to be allocated into the
schedule by using the priority rules. The priority
rules are simply written as {LST , GRD} . The
schedule is made according to only one objective
function at a time. As mentioned before, in order
to define the optimal start time of activity j ,
ES j and LS j should be put into the objective
function, respectively, the their impact on the
resource profile will be reflected in the objective
value. In this way, an optimal start time of
activity j can be obtained according to the
minimum objective value. In the case that more
than one optimal start time exist, the earliest start
time will be selected as the start time of activity j .
After that, activity j will be put into a set M
that stores all the activities whose start times have
been determined. Then, the relations between
activity j and its predecessors and its successors
are calculated as follows:
ESi  max( ESi ,( Si  d ji )) (12)
for all i  j predecessor
LSi  min( LSi ,( S j  d ij )) (13)
for all i  j successors
For all activity i , a new TFi can be obtained.
Then, check again if any activity satisfies
TF  0 after its ES j and LS j are updated.
If there are such activities, these activities will be
considered critical activities and be put into the
set M . Furthermore, the start time of these
activities will be updated as Si  ESi . Then
update resource profile again. The above Step 1,
Step 2, and update resource profile are repeated
again and again until all the activities have been
allocated into the schedule, which means the
original algorithm is finished.
PART 2 : The neighborhood structure: the
method to produce neighboring solutions is that
randomly select an activity in the current solution,
re-calculate its earliest start time and latest start
time, and specify a new start time by using a
random distributed number, in this way, a
neighboring solution produced.
PART 3 : Tabu list: the basic concept of tabu
list is that searched areas should be avoided to be
searched again. In this research, a neighboring
solution is only different in the start time of one
activity. Hence, in the tabu list, only the activity
index and the new start time of the activity are
stored. The length of the tabu list is fixed, and the
oldest information stored in the tabu list will be
 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.

deleted when the list is full and more new we tested on the 20 well-known cases taken from
information is coming into the list. ProGen.

PART 4 : Metropolis acceptance criteria: this is 4.1 Parameter set for experimental cases
a mechanism that simulated annealing features,
which is activated when a neighboring solution
In the following, the parameter setting in this
worse than the current solution is produced. At
paper will be detailed. The parameters in this
first, a random number is produced within the
paper include the initial temperature, final
range [0,1], then an exponential value is
temperature, cooling rate and tabu length. The
generated according to the current temperature
setting of parameters as follows:
and the difference between the current solution
and the neighboring solution. If the exponential
Initial temperature: 15
value is greater than the random number, the
neighboring solution worse than the current Final temperature: 0.005
solution will be accepted. Therefore, when the
Cooling rate: 0.96
temperature is high, such solutions are more
likely to be accepted; and when the temperature Times of temperature reduction: 197
gets lower, it gets harder and harder for such
solutions to be accepted. The formula is given as: Tabu length: 55

PART 5 : Cooling scheme: when a certain

times of loop are finished, TSSA will
automatically reduce the temperature by using the Besides, the benchmark problem used in this
following equation: paper is never used on resource leveling problems

New temperature  current tempterature  cooling rate (14) by other researchers except K. Neumann and J.
Zimmermann, therefore, in this research, in order

PART 6 : Termination criteria: the TSSA
algorithm will terminate when the temperature of
TSSA has reduced to the final temperature.
to obtain near-optimal solution, increase the
initial temperature to 60 and the cooling rate to
0.99.

The concepts of TSSA as shown in these Marek

4.2 Experiment result

Mika[11], Chao Yong Zhang[12].

20 examples have been selected in this

research for simulation. For each example, an
4 Simulation Result
initial schedule, or initial solution, is first
The proposed TSSA algorithm was obtained by the algorithm proposed in the
implemented in JAVA language on a personal reference literature. After that, the TSSA
computer Pentium 3.0GHz. In order to evaluate proposed in this paper will be used to search the
and compare the performance of TSSA algorithm, optimal solution for resource leveling based on
 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.

the initial solution. The simulation data is given

in the table 1 below:
 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.

Case No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Initial
590.8 534.3 765.9 665 1137 297 884.8 428.4 465.3 831.6 381.6 722.4 275 708.8 478.4 492 698.4 834 477 712.4
solution

Simulation
TSSA Evaluated Value
No.

Min. 438.2 505.7 731.7 639. 1120.2 186.0 875.0 260.4 352.8 828.8 301.0 683.2 221.1 683.2 456.0 379.2 538.0 312.0 438.0 523.9

Max. 467.6 526.5 733.5 648.0 1120.0 201.0 875.0 285.0 362.0 831.0 328.0 683.0 243.0 683.0 478.0 408.0 557.1 387.6 440.0 535.0

Avg. 444.0 514.8 732.5 640.7 1120.2 192.0 875.0 264.6 354.8 829.5 320.1 683.0 233.2 683.0 466.0 389.0 541.8 361.6 438.0 527.2

Standard
9.47 7.99 0.51 3.49 0.00 6.20 0.00 8.16 4.17 0.99 9.88 0.00 10.64 0.00 11.14 10.92 6.09 21.64 0.97 3.42
Deviation

Near-optim
438.2 505.7 731.7 639.1 1120.0 173.0 875.0 248.4 352.8 828.0 249.0 683.2 217.0 683.2 456.0 379.2 456.3 310.8 438.0 523.9
al

Table 1 Result of simulation

T he fig ure of sim ulation result

4.3 Experiment analysis 1200

1000

800
Objective value

literature
600 TSSA min.
near-optimal
400

200

From simulation results, two important 0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Case No.
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

conclusions can be got. First, significant Figure 2 Comparison between initial solution, the
minimal value of TSSA and near-optimal
improvement can be made by TSSA to the initial
solution got by using the algorithm proposed in 1200
T he fig ure of sim ulation result

1000

the reference literature. This proves that it is an 800

Objctive value

literature
600 TSSA max.
near-optimal
400

effective way to re-calculate the start time of the

200

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Case No.

initial activity and adjust the start time. Second, it Figure 3 Comparison between initial solution, the
maximal value of TSSA and near-optimal
can be noticed that the solutions got by TSSA are
The fig ure of sim ulation result

very similar to near-optimal solutions. This

1200

1000

800
Objective value

literature

proves that the TSSA algorithm, which combines

600 TSSA avg.
near-optimal
400

200

tabu search and simulated annealing, has a strong 0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Case No.
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

ability of searching and is able to find solutions Figure 4 Comparison between initial solution, the
average value of TSSA and near-optimal
similar or equivalent to near-optimal solutions. The standard dev iation of TSSA

25.00

20.00
Standard deviation value

15.00
TSSA

Four figures are given to show the results of

10.00

5.00

0.00
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

simulation:
Case No.

Figure 5 Standard deviation of TSSA

Blue color: initial solution 5 Conclusions

Red color: TSSA solution This research aims at resource leveling. The
benchmark used in this research is the activity
Orange color: near-optimal solution
scheduling obtained according to resource
limitations (resource upper limit and the unit cost
 Ruei-Bin Jung, Wen-Chung Chang.

of the resource). There are maximal time interval Research 117.

and minimal time interval between each two
activities. K. Neumann and J. Zimmermann [2] M. Ben-Daya , M. Al-Fawzan 1997, A tabu

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