The minimization of tool switches problem (MTSP) seeks a sequence to process a set of jobs so that the number of tool switches required is minimized. This study presents a new heuristic for the MTSP. This heuristic has two phases: a constructive phase, based on a graph where the vertices correspond to tools and there is an arc k = (i, j) linking vertices i and j if and only if the tools i and j are required to execute some job; and an improvement phase, based on an Iterated Local Search. Computational results show that the proposed heuristic has a good performance on the instances tested contributing to a significant reduction in the number of nodes generated by an enumerative algorithm.
Scheduling; Tool switches; Heuristic; Graph; Metaheuristic
