A tabu search approach for solving a difficult forest harvesting machine location problem

Legues, AD; Ferland, JA; Ribeiro, CC; Vera, JR; Weintraub A.

Abstract

This paper deals with two main problems in forest harvesting. The first is that of selecting the locations for the machinery to haul logs from the points where they are felled to the roadside. The second consists in designing the access road network connecting the existing road network with the points where machinery is installed. Their combination induces a very important and difficult problem to solve in forest harvesting. It can be formulated as a combination of two difficult optimization problems: a plant location problem and a fixed charge network flow problem. In this paper, we propose a solution approach based on tabu search. The proposed heuristic includes several enhancements of the basic tabu search framework. The main difficulty lies in evaluating neighboring solutions, which involves decisions related to location of machinery and to road network arcs. Hence, the neighborhood is more complex than in typical applications of metaheuristics. Minimum spanning tree algorithms and Steiner tree heuristics are used to deal with this problem. Numerical results indicate that the heuristic approach is very attractive and leads to better solutions than those provided by state-of-the-art integer programming codes in limited computation times, with solution times significantly smaller. The numerical results do not vary too much when typical parameters such as the tabu tenure are modified, except for the dimension of neighborhood. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Más información

Título según WOS: A tabu search approach for solving a difficult forest harvesting machine location problem
Título según SCOPUS: A tabu search approach for solving a difficult forest harvesting machine location problem
Título de la Revista: EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH
Volumen: 179
Número: 3
Editorial: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
Fecha de publicación: 2007
Página de inicio: 788
Página final: 805
Idioma: English
URL: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0377221705007447
DOI:

10.1016/j.ejor.2005.03.071

Notas: ISI, SCOPUS