Tabu Search

This book is a comprehensive treatment of tabu search, a meta-heuristic optimization approach the authors argue is dramatically changing the ability to solve a wide range of hard problems. It presents the major ideas of the method through worked examples and uses numerous illustrations and diagrams to clarify principles that the authors note have not always been well understood or applied. The scope spans many domains, including resource planning, telecommunications, VLSI design, financial analysis, scheduling, space planning, energy distribution, logistics, pattern classification, and flexible manufacturing.

Rather than focusing exclusively on computational recipes or abstract themes, the book aims to deliver both hands-on knowledge and deeper insight, and it also covers advanced issues so researchers can extend the method beyond current developments. It is designed to be accessible to researchers and practitioners in management science, industrial engineering, economics, and computer science, and can serve as a textbook or supplementary course text, providing the grounding readers need to create their own successful tabu search applications.