An Ant Colony Optimization Application to the Single Machine Total Weighted Tardiness Problem

In this extended abstract we present an algorithm based on the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) metaheuristic for the single machine total weighted tardiness problem, a well known NP–hard scheduling problem. Our ACO algorithm is currently among the best algorithms known for this problem type. In particular, we will discuss three elements that enable it to find very good solutions quickly. These are a powerful local search algorithm, the use of candidate lists that guide the ants’ solution construction, and a heterogeneous ant colony where ants apply various local search variants concurrently.

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