Abstract
Constraint programming and local search are two well known optimization technologies. In recent years, methods for combining these two technologies have been put forward, one of which advocates the use of constraint programming for searching the local neighborhood of the current solution. We present a search technique which improves on the performance of this constraint programming-based local search method and perform experiments on a variety of both simple and more complex combinatorial problems. We also demonstrate the benefit of combining local and complete search methods.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
E.H.L. Aarts and J.K. Lenstra (eds.), Local Search in Combinatorial Optimization (Wiley, Chichester, 1997).
D. Applegate and W. Cook, A computational study of the Job-Shop Scheduling problem, ORSA Journal on Computing 3 (1991) 149-156.
B.D. Backer, V. Furnon, P. Kilby, P. Prosser and P. Shaw, Solving vehicle routing problems with constraint programming and meta-heuristics, Journal of Heuristics 6(4) (2000) 501-524.
J.E. Beasley, An algorithm for solving large capacitated warehouse location problems, European Journal of Operational Research 33 (1988) 314-325.
J.E. Beasley, OR-library: distributing test problems by electronic mail, Journal of the Operational Research Society 41(11) (1990) 1069-1072.
Y. Caseau and F. Laburthe, The CLAIRE documentation, Technical Report LIENS Report 96-15, École Normale Supérieure (1995).
Y. Caseau and F. Laburthe, SALSA: A language for search algorithms, in: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP '98), eds. M. Maher and J.-F. Puget (Springer, Berlin, 1998) pp. 310-324.
L.L. et M. Lemaître, LNS/VSP: une méthode de recherche locale pour la résolution de VCSP en contexte interruptible. Presented at the 5ièmes Journées Nationales sur la Résolution Pratique de Problèmes NP-Complets (1999).
A. Fernandez and P. Hill, A comparative study of eight constraint programming languages over the Boolean and finite domains, Constraints 5(3) (2000) 275-301.
F.W. Glover and M. Laguna, Tabu Search (Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, 1997).
R. Haralick and G. Elliott, Increasing tree search efficiency for constraint satisfaction problems, Artificial Intelligence 14 (1980) 263-313.
W.D. Harvey and M.L. Ginsberg, Limited discrepancy search, in: Proceedings of the 14th IJCAI (Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 1995) pp. 607-615.
ILOG, ILOG Dispatcher Reference Manual, Version 2.1, ILOG S.A., 9, Rue de Verdun, Gentilly, France (1999).
ILOG, ILOG Solver Reference Manual, Version 5.2, ILOG S.A., 9, Rue de Verdun, Gentilly, France (2001).
U. Junker, S.E. Karisch and T. Fahle (eds.), Proceedings of CP-AI-OR 2000, published as Technical Report TR-001-2000, Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing (2000).
G.A.P. Kindervater and M.W.P. Savelsbergh, Vehicle routing: handling edge exchanges, in: Local Search in Combinatorial Optimization, eds. E.H.L. Aarts and J.K. Lenstra (Wiley, Chichester, 1997) pp. 337-360.
S. Lin, Computer solutions of the traveling salesman problem, Bell Systems Technology Journal 44 (1965) 2245-2269.
L. Michel and P. van Hentenryck, Localizer, Constraints 5 (2000) 41-82.
L. Michel and P. van Hentenryck, Localizer: A modeling language for local search, in: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP '97), ed. G. Smolka (Springer, Berlin, 1997) pp. 237-251.
S. Minton, M.D. Johnston, A.B. Philips and P. Laird, Minimizing conflicts: a heuristic repair method for constraint satisfaction and scheduling problems, Artificial Intelligence 58 (1992) 161-205.
G. Pesant and M. Gendreau, A view of local search in constraint programming, in: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP '96), ed. E.C. Freuder (Springer, Berlin, 1996) pp. 353-366.
G. Pesant and M. Gendreau, A constraint programming framework for local search methods, Journal of Heuristics 5 (1999) 255-279.
G. Pesant, M. Gendreau and J.-M. Rousseau, GENIUS-CP: A generic single-vehicle routing algorithm, in: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP '97), ed. G. Smolka (Springer, Berlin, 1997).
L.-M. Rousseau, G. Pesant and M. Gendreau, A hybrid algorithm to solve a physician rostering problem, in: Proceedings of CP-AI-OR 2000, eds. U. Junker, S.E. Karisch and T. Fahle, published as Technical Report TR-001-2000, Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing (2000), pp. 145-152.
M.W.P. Savelsbergh, Local search in routing problems with time windows, Annals of Operations Research 4 (1985) 285-305.
P. Shaw, Using constraint programming and local search methods to solve vehicle routing problems, in: Fourth International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP '98), eds. M. Maher and J.-F. Puget (Springer, Berlin, 1998) pp. 417-431.
M.M. Solomon, Algorithms for the vehicle routing and scheduling problem with time window constraints, Operations Research 35 (1987) 254-265.
E. Taillard, P. Badeau, M. Gendreau, F. Guertain and J.-Y. Potvin, A tabu search heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with soft time windows, Transportation Science 32(2) (1997).
E. Tsang, Foundations of Constraint Satisfaction (Academic Press, New York, 1993).
P. van Hentenryck, Constraint Satisfaction in Logic Programming (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989).
M. Wallace, Practical applications of constraint programming, Constraints 1 (1996) 139-168.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Shaw, P., De Backer, B. & Furnon, V. Improved Local Search for CP Toolkits. Annals of Operations Research 115, 31–50 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021188818613
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021188818613