A Variable Neighbourhood Search algorithm that employs new neighbourhoods is proposed for solving a task allocation problem whose main characteristics are: (i) each task requires a certain amount of resources and each processor has a capacity constraint which limits the total resource of the tasks that are assigned to it; (ii) the cost of solution includes fixed costs when using processors, task assignment costs, and communication costs between tasks assigned to different processors. A computational study shows that the algorithm performs well in terms of time and solution quality relative to other local search procedures that have been proposed.
Lusa and Potts REF proposed the VNS algorithm for the constrained task allocation problem and compared the performance of the proposed algorithm with the other local search procedures.
A variable neighbourhood search algorithm for the constrained task allocation problem
Journal of the Operational Research Society
Computer Science