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International Journal of Production Research

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Tabu search-based algorithm for the TOC product mix decision

Godfrey C. Onwubolu

To cite this Article Onwubolu, Godfrey C.(2001) 'Tabu search-based algorithm for the TOC product mix decision',
International Journal of Production Research, 39: 10, 2065 — 2076
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00207540010005736
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207540010005736

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 int. j. prod. res., 2001, vol. 39, no. 10, 2065± 2076

Tabu search-based algorithm for the TOC product mix decision

GODFREY C. ONWUBOLUy

The theory of constraints (TOC) is a management philosophy that maximizes

pro® ts in a manufacturing plant with a demonstrated bottleneck. The product
mix decision is one application of TOC that involves determination of the quan-
tity and the identi® cation of each product to produce. However, the original TOC
heuristic is considered to produce unrealizable solution when a manufacturing
plant has multiple resource constraints. This paper presents a tabu search-based
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TOC product mix heuristic to identify optimal or near optimal product mix for
small problem instances under conditions where the original TOC heuristic failed.
The tabu search-based TOC product mix heuristic is further used to solve large
problem instances typical of practical manufacturing scenario. The experimental
results for small to medium size problem show that the tabu search-based TOC
heuristic compares favourably with those of optimal methods. Large size prob-
lems for which optimal methods have not been established in terms of feasibility
in computation times were also solved in reasonable times with good quality
solutions, thus con® rming that the proposed approach is appropriate for adop-
tion by production planners for the product mix problem in the manufacturing
industry.

1. Introduction
The early roots of the theory of constraints (TOC) are associated with Goldratt
(1990a) and his ® nite production scheduling system, optimized production tech-
nology (OPT). The TOC philosophy contends that the goal of any ® rm can be
represented by three bottom-line ® nancial measures as follows: net pro® t, return
on investment, and cash ¯ ow (Goldratt and Fox 1986). From the operational
point of view, TOC de® nes three important performance indicators that are useful
in evaluating manufacturing cash ¯ ow (Goldratt and Fox 1986). From the opera-
tional point of view, TOC de® nes three important performance indicators that are
useful in evaluating manufacturing progress towards this goal. These performance
indicators are throughput, inventory and operating expenses. Throughput is the rate
at which the manufacturing business sells its ® nished goods. Inventory is de® ned to
be the raw materials, components and ® nished goods that have been paid for by the
business but have not been sold. Operating expenses are de® ned as the cost of
turning inventory into throughput.
Financial measurements at the strategic level already mentioned are aŒected by
changes in any one of the three performance indicators at the operational level. The
eŒects that changes in throughput, inventory or operating expenses have on the
® nancial measurement of net pro® t, return on investment and cash ¯ ow are sum-
marized. An increase entirely in throughput results in simultaneous increase in net

y Department of Industrial Engineering, National University of Science and Technology,

PO Box AC939, ASCOT, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Present address: Department of Technology,
University of the South Paci® c, PO Box 1168, Suva, Fiji. e-mail: onwubolu_g@usp.ac.fj

International Journal of Production Research ISSN 0020± 7543 print/ISSN 1366± 588X online # 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/00207540010005736
 2066 G. C. Onwubolu

pro® t, return on investment and cash ¯ ow. This means the business is selling more
® nished goods while maintaining a stable level of inventory and operating expenses.
A reduction in operating expenses has similar result. This means that the business is
producing the ® nished goods at reduced cost while inventory level and the rate at
which the ® nished goods are sold are invariant. Consequently, there is an increase in
the cash ¯ ow, net pro® t and return on investment. A reduction in inventory level
increases the return on investment and the cash ¯ ow.
The TOC philosophy therefore, focuses on the goal of manufacturing , i.e.
increasing throughput, while simultaneously reducing inventory and operating
cost. This leads to simultaneous increase in net pro® t, return-on-investment , and
cash ¯ ow. One key idea of TOC is that the system’ s constraints, known as capacity-
constraint resources, determine the system’s throughput and should be the focus of
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management attention. A constraint is de® ned as a point or storage in the manu-

facturing process that holds down the amount of product that a factory can produce.
It is where the ¯ ow of materials being worked on, narrows to a thin stream (Bylinsky
1983). A constraint prevents a system from achieving its goal and may include a
machine whose capacity limits the throughput of the whole production process, a
highly specialized operator or scarce tools. The TOC philosophy focuses on the role
constraints play in systems and capitalizing on their role, improves the system’s per-
formance towards its goal. The TOC procedure that provides continuous improvement
consists of ® ve focus steps (Goldratt 1990b). TOC also uses several speci® c tech-
niques to aid in accomplishing the ® ve focus steps (Luebbe and Finch 1992).
This paper will demonstrate that the tabu search approach is one speci® c tech-
nique that can be applied to the ® rst two steps of the TOC procedure for the product
mix problem. Moreover, the paper will demonstrate that when there are multiple
constrained resources in the product mix problem, the tabu search-based approach
better achieves the pro® t maximisation goal of the theory of constraints than the
traditional TOC algorithm.
Extensive studies have been carried out to identify product mix which maximizes
pro® t (Buxey 1989). The traditional TOC algorithm (Goldratt 1990a) is not capable
of maximizing the ® rm’ s pro® t for the problem mix problem when multiple con-
strained resources exist. The failure of TOC to identify the optimal solution under
the existence of multiple constrained resources has raised concerns among research-
ers. The integer linear programming (ILP) technique has been employed to optimize
the product mix. This technique is known to give optimum solution but takes much
computation time. The TOC product mix heuristic and ILP have been compared
(Luebbe and Finch 1992) and other researchers have identi® ed conditions under
which the TOC heuristic could create non-optimal product mix (Lee and Plenert
1993). Plenert (1993) created an example where two of the resources constraints have
not been satis® ed by the TOC solution. Therefore, it is not feasible. Patterson (1992)
tested the TOC heuristic using problems where the solution fully utilized the bottle-
neck. Mayday (1994) and Posnack (1994) argued that a generic TOC solution should
allow fractional quantities in order to achieve optimality and that the shop ¯ oor can
carry forward an uncompleted job to the next week. Fredendall and Lea (1997)
proposed a revised TOC heuristic that identi® es the optimal product mix for prob-
lems where the TOC product mix heuristic previously could not do so.
All the papers reviewed above have considered techniques that solved the prod-
uct mix problems for small problem sizes and therefore, some of them could achieve
optimality. Therefore, the ® rst aim of this paper is to generalize the conditions where
 Tabu search for the TOC product mix decision 2067

the traditional TOC heuristic creates unrealizable solution. The second aim is to
present an approach which is capable of addressing large-scale problem typical of
manufacturing ® rms. To achieve these goals, the paper compares the performance of
the tabu search-base d approach to both the original TOC heuristic, the ILP solution
and the revised TOC algorithm. Further, large-scale problems that are di cult if not
impossible for other methods to address are generated randomly and solved.

2. Theory of constraints heuristic

The traditional TOC heuristic for solving the product mix problem is explained
in detail in the literature (Luebbe and Finch 1992, Lee and Plenert 1993, Plenert
1993). The steps are summarized for convenience as follows:
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Step 1. Identify the systems constraints.

(1a) Calculate the capacities of each resource
(1b) Calculate the loads on capacity
(1c) Calculate the critically constrained resource (CCR).
Step 2. Determine how to exploit the system’s constraints.
(2a) Calculate the throughput of each product as the sales price less the raw
material costs
(2b) Calculate the throughput per unit of product of the CCR
(2c) Determine how much of each product should be produced
(2d) Calculate the total net pro® t as the total throughput less the operating
expenses.
Step 3. Subordinate everything else to the decisions made in Step 2. The thrust of
this step is to ensure that decisions are made with the exploitation of the
system’s constraint as an overall objective. The TOC technique used to
accomplish the exploitation of system’ s constraint is drum-buŒer-rope
(DBR). The drum is a system constraint or other critical resource that sets
the pace of production. The ropes are schedules or other signalling methods
that tie the release of raw materials and customer promise dates to the
production at the drum. The buVers are extra material on the shop ¯ oor
resulting from work being released earlier than the absolute minimum time
required to complete all production steps. More information on DBR are
found in Schragenheim and Ronen (1990).
Step 4. Elevate the system’ s constraints.
Improving the performance of the system towards its goal by elevating the
constraint is the focus at this stage. Improvements which management
should focus on include increasing the total eŒective equipment production
(TEEP), overall equipment eŒectiveness (OEE) and net equipment eŒective-
ness (NEE) at the system’s constraint.
Step 5. If a constraint is broken return to step 1.
This step is the key that opens the door for continuous improvement.
Without this step inertia would dominate.
Steps 1 and 2 of the TOC heuristic to the product mix problem lend themselves well
to quantitative analysis. The purpose of this article is to propose a tabu search-based
procedure for solving the product mix problem and comparing its result with other
techniques in the literature.
 2068 G. C. Onwubolu

Resource number
Market Sales Material Throughput
Products 10 20 30 40 50 60 demand price $ price $ put $

A 2.5 9.5 6.5 12.0 4.0 30.0 20 30 10 20

B 5.5 3.5 1.5 16.0 1.0 10.0 30 50 42 8
C 3.5 8.5 9.5 25.0 2.0 9.0 40 50 25 25
D 2.0 8.0 10.0 30.0 1.0 10.0 30 40 25 15
E 10.0 20.0 15.0 0.0 10.0 2.0 60 20 15 5
Total 1015 2075 1755 2620 820 1680
load
(min)
Capacity 2400 1825 2400 2400 2400 2400
(min)
Overload Ð 250 Ð 220 Ð Ð
(min)
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Table 1. Total load computations and overloads.

In order to show the drawback of the original TOC heuristic when multiple
constraints exist, a product mix problem taken from Fredendall and Lea (1997) is
discussed. The product mix problem shown in table 1 is based on Patterson’s (1992)
problem, but is revised to include multiple constraints by Fredendall and Lea (1997).
Following steps 1 and 2, the original TOC product mix heuristic identi® ed the prod-
uct mix as 20A, 30B, 40C, 30D and 48E with a total throughput of $2325. However,
this solution is unrealizable since one resource is overloaded. Fredendall and Lea
(1997) solved the same problem using a revised TOC heuristic with product mix as
20A, 20B, 40C, 28D and 50E with a total throughput of $2230. This solution is
identical to the optimal ILP solution.
This paper presents a tabu search-based approach to resolve the problem inher-
ent in the traditional TOC heuristic when multiple constraints exist in the product
mix decision. The remaining sections are organized as follows. Section 3 describes
the product mix problem. Section 4 presents the tabu search-based approach for the
product mix problem. Section 5 presents the comparison of results for the tabu
search-based procedure, the original TOC heuristic, ILP approach employed by
most researchers and the best-known revised TOC heuristic by Fredendall and
Lea. All the problems that appear in the literature are small in size. Here we
de® ne problem size as the product of the number of resources and the number of
each product in the product mix. Furthermore, large problem instances are gener-
ated randomly and solved. For this category of problems there are no known tech-
niques that are capable of solving them. Section 6 gives the conclusions and direction
for further research.

3. The product mix problem

The formulation of the product mix decision problem is given as follows:
X
n
Maximize zˆ tj xj …1†
jˆ1

X
n
Subject to pij xj µ ci i ˆ 1; 2; . . . ; m …2†
jˆ1

0 µ xj µ b j j ˆ 1; 2; . . . ; n; …3†
 Tabu search for the TOC product mix decision 2069

where tj is given as the throughput of the product type j; pij denotes the processing
time required for resource i to produce a type j product; xj is the decision variable
representing the quantity of the product type j; ci is the capacity limit of resource i; bj
is the bound for xj ; m is the number of resources; n is the number of product mix
types.
The TOC product mix problem algorithm is the decision process that develops
the master production schedule (MPS). The MPS is the detailed statement of top
level planned production over the short to medium term. It seeks to balance incom-
ing customer orders and forecast requirements with available material and capacity.
In this paper, we discuss the process of applying a tabu search heuristic to the
product mix decision problem. In fact, to our knowledge, this is the ® rst application
of tabu search to the TOC product mix decision problem.
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4. Tabu search-based heuristic for the product mix problem

Search heuristics for combinatorial optimization problems are classi® ed into: (i)
optimization algorithms and (ii) approximation algorithms or heuristics.
Optimization algorithms include A* search, integer linear programming, branch
and bound, etc. Although they can ® nd optimal solutions, they are limited to solving
small size problems. On the other hand, approximation heuristics can solve practical
real-life problems, with almost optimal solutions most of the time. Some of these
approximation heuristics are now referred to as intelligent search procedures. In
recent years, a growing body of literature suggests the use of search procedures
for combinatorial optimization problems. Five intelligent search procedures that
have been identi® ed include simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, tabu search,
target analysis and neural networks (Glover 1986). Consequently, over the past few
years, a number of successful attempts have been made to demonstrate the applic-
ability of one of these methods; i.e. tabu search (TS) to combinatorial optimization
problems.
Tabu search (TS) was proposed in its present form by Glover (1986, 1989, 1990)
as an iterative process which explores the solution space by repeatedly making moves
from one solution, S, to another solution, S 0 , located in the neighbourhood, N(S), of
S. These moves are performed with the ultimate goal of reaching a good solution by
the evaluation of some objective function f to be optimized (maximized or mini-
mized). In tabu search, the function f …S 0 † need not be better that f(S) in every
iteration as in other traditional iterative approaches. The search will terminate
when some stopping criterion is satis® ed.
TS employs an adaptive memory (tabu list) to tabu certain moves for a period of
time. In every iteration of TS, a move will be instantly assigned to the tabu list when
the move is chosen to lead the search from the current solution to its neighbouring
solution. This move will then be prohibited for a number of immediately succeeding
iterations. This number of iterations is referred to as the tabu list size, and the size is
limited to a certain length. When the list has reached its speci® ed size, the move that
has been placed in the list earliest is removed and the most current move is inserted.
In other words, moves enter and leave the tabu list on ® rst-come-® rst-served (FCFS)
basis. With the tabu list facility, TS is able to prevent cycling of the search and guide
the search to the solution regions which have not been visited, and approach good
solutions in the solution space. Glover (1989) suggested the aspiration criterion to
make up for cases where the design of the tabu list may prohibit the search from
some solution regions that are appealing. The principle of aspiration criterion is that
 2070 G. C. Onwubolu

if a speci® c move that is currently tabued has the potential to lead the search to good
solution regions, then that move should be released from the tabu list. Among the
several aspiration criteria, the common one is to remove a tabued move from the
tabu list if this move can provide a better solution than the incumbent solution.
According to previous research (Taillard 1990), the performance of TS is in¯ u-
enced by the following factors: approach used to generate the initial solution, type of
move, size of the neighbourhood examined, tabu list size, and the termination cri-
terion. For this study, the selection of the parameters is documented as follows.

4.1. Initial solution

There are two ways to generate an initial solution, randomly or using a heuristic.
A good initial solution may lead to a better ® nal solution. In this research, for the
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product mix problem, a random initial solution is generated randomly. The decision
variable, xj , representing the quantity of the product type j is generated randomly to
satisfy equations (1)± (3).
For example, a good initial solution for the problem in table 1 is {20 20 40 25 50}.
This solution is equivalent to 20A, 20B, 40C, 25D and 50E. This is a feasible solution
because it satis® es all the conditions of equations (2) and (3) and using equation (1),
a total throughput value of 2185…20*20 ‡ 8*20 ‡ 25*40 ‡ 15*25 ‡ 5*50† is
obtained.

4.2. Move
The move is a process that transforms the search from the current solution to its
neighbourhood solution. There are two kinds of moves that are commonly used:
swap and insert moves. In the swap move, a product type in the ith position is
interchanged with the product type in the jth position. In the insert move, a product
type removed from the ith position is inserted in the jth position. The insert move is
preferred to the swap move by many researchers because it is known to advance the
search to nearby regions within the neighbourhood. However, experiments should be
carried out to conclude which move type is more appropriate. In this research, the
insert moves provide better solutions than the swap moves. These two moves are
illustrated as follows:

4.3. Neighbourhood size

The neighbourhood size is the number of candidate solutions to be evaluated in
each iteration of the search process. TS use two types of neighbourhood size. The
 Tabu search for the TOC product mix decision 2071

® rst type is the whole size neighbourhood in which all possible neighbours are
evaluated and the best non-tabued solution in each iteration, is selected. The
second type is the random size neighbourhood in which the neighbours are evaluated
and the ® rst non-tabued solution that improves the solution in each iteration, is
selected.
In this research, the exhaustive or whole size neighbourhood is used. The move
described in the previous sub-section illustrates the concept of neighbourhood as
follows:

Neighbourhood 1 20 20 40 25 50
Neighbourhood 2 20 40 25 20 50
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The ® rst neighbourhood is made up of product types {20, 20, 40, 25, 50}. By inserting
the second product type in the fourth position, a new neighbourhood is obtained
which is made up of product types {20, 40, 25, 20, 50}. The move mechanism is there-
fore, instrumental to generating new neighbourhood structures. Each neighbour-
hood is checked for feasibility by subjecting it to the conditions in equations (2)
and (3) and if feasible, it is evaluated using equation (1).

4.4. Tabu list size

The tabu list contains a list of moves that have been made, and are therefore
prohibited or tabued. In designing the TS scheme, too small a tabu list size may
cause cycling of the tabu search, while too large a tabu list size may prevent the tabu
search from reaching certain good solution regions. Glover (1989) has suggested
tabu list sizes between 5 and 12. In this research a tabu list size of 7 is chosen.

4.5. Aspiration criterion

Several aspiration criteria are employed to avoid missing good solutions. At each
step, the largest weighted non-tabu move is selected from those available, and an
aspiration criterion is used to allow a move to be considered admissible in spite of
leading to a tabu solution. In the present work reported, the way we implemented the
tabu list made aspiration criterion unnecessary. For a neighbourhood, all the feasible
solutions are declared tabu and the solution with the largest objective function value
is declared currentbest. The elite candidates having the currentbest values for
each neighbourhood are examined for the one having the largest objective
function value. The currentbest values for each neighbourhood represent the local
optima. The largest of all these solutions is found, and the best, known as isbest,
results in global minimum solution. The way we implemented it in the product mix
problem allows no better solution to be found than the elite solution for each
neighbourhood.

4.6. Intensi® cation

The mechanism for intensi® cation enhances the search to focus on examining
elite solutions in a neighbourhood. It tends to move the search to a neighbouring
position in the search space, and so could be considered a local search. The intensi-
® cation length used for the work reported here is equal to the number of the product
mix types.
 2072 G. C. Onwubolu

4.7. Diversi® cation

The mechanism for diversi® cation allows large jump to be made in the solution
space. This ensures that large areas of the space are searched and solutions do not get
stuck in local minima. This mechanism is also referred to as the restarting procedure.
The diversi® cation length is equal to 100. For each diversi® cation process, a diŒerent
initial schedule is randomly generated. This way, the search is able to explore a large
solution space, thereby enhancing the possibility of ® nding the optimum solution in
a very short time.

4.8. Stopping criteria

The most accepted stopping criterion relies on the search being terminated if the
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objective function value has not improved within a certain number of iterations,
which is usually speci® ed at the start of the run. Another criterion relies on the search
being terminated when a maximum number of iterations has been reached to avoid
an extremely long run. The problem with this other criterion is that it is di cult to
determine the maximum number of iterations because the value may either lead to
termination prematurely or expensive termination. In our implementation, we used
the intensi® cation and diversi® cation lengths to terminate the solution search. This
stopping rule is faster than the others described above. For the work reported here,
search is terminated after 15n2 total iterations, where n is the number of product mix
types.
By applying the diŒerent steps of the TS-based heuristic to the product mix
problem shown in table 1, the results of the TS-based heuristic are compared to
the original TOC heuristic solution, integer linear programming solution and the
revised TOC heuristic solution of Fredendall and Lea (1997). The TS-based heuristic
results in a product mix of 20A, 27B, 40C, 24D and 49E with a total throughput of
$2221. The optimal solution for this problem using ILP and the revised TOC heur-
istic is $2230. The original TOC product mix heuristic identi® es a throughput of
$2325. But this solution is infeasible, since one resource is over-utilized. This means
that the TS-based heuristic is 99.6% as good as the ILP technique for this example
problem. The iteration history of the tabu search-based heuristic for this example is
shown in ® gure 1.

2250
2200
2150
2100
2050 Run-1
f(x)

2000
1950 Run-2
1900
1850
1800
1750
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Iter ation s (X10)

Figure 1. Iteration history of the TS-based heuristic for Frendendall and Lea (1977)
problem.
 Tabu search for the TOC product mix decision 2073

5. Computationa l results
The tabu search-based heuristic was written in PASCAL 7.0 and runs on a
Pentium PC. Two sets of problem types that were used are presented: published
data sets and randomly generated problem instances.
The tabu search-based heuristic used for this research was tested with the prob-
lems previously cited in the literature by comparing its solutions to the original TOC,
integer linear programming, and the revised TOC heuristic of Fredendall and Lea
(1997). For comparison, these heuristics are referred to as original TOC (TOC),
integer linear programming (ILP), and revised-TOC heuristic by Fredendall and
Lear (1997) (R-TOC). Tables 2(a) and 2(b) show a comparison of results obtained
between the TS-based heuristic and these other methods. The results show that
compared with other methods, the TS-based heuristic performs slightly worse than
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ILP in four (problems 4, 7, 8, 9) out of nine cases (44% ). It performs equally well as
ILP in two cases (problems 3, 6) or 22% , and competes with ILP in two cases
(problems 1, 2) or 22% . ILP clearly performs better than TS in one case (problem
5). The TS-based heuristic performs equally to R-TOC in two cases (problems 3, 6).
R-TOC clearly outperform s the tabu search-based heuristic in two cases (problems 5,
7).
The number of factorial experiments for the tabu search-based heuristic for the
product mix problem consists of 8 (23 ) combinations, which include two types of
moves (swap and insert), two diversi® cations (25 and 50), and two tabu list sizes (7
and 12). The experiments carried out show that the insert moves are superior to the
swap moves, 50 diversi® cations produce better results than 25 diversi® cations for
insert moves, and a tabu list size of 7 is adequate. From the experiments, it is
concluded that for the tabu search-based heuristic the best combination is insert
moves, 50 diversi® cation and tabu list size of 7.
The comparison of the proposed tabu search-base d heuristic results and other
methods in the literature shows that the proposed approach is appropriate for solv-
ing the product mix problem. However, all the problems reported to date are of
small sizes (see table 2(a)) and are considered too simplistic compared to typical
manufacturing situations. Therefore, a second data set (table 3), typical of manu-
facturing environments are generated randomly and solved using the proposed tabu
search-base d heuristic. For this class of problems, other techniques listed in table 2
cannot perform due to computational time constraints . Table 3 shows total through-
put and CPU times for randomly generated data for the problem mix TOC problem
instances. The resources processing times (in minutes) for producing the problem
mix were generated within the lower and upper bound ranges of [0, 10]. The prob-
lems do not have a routing speci® ed and consequently, it will not matter whether it is
a ¯ ow shop or a job shop. Only the bottleneck resources are loaded over 100% . For
the product mixes, demands (units/period), selling prices (in $) and raw material
prices (in $) were generated within lower and upper bound limits of [20, 100],
[20, 60], and [5, 20] respectively. Ten data sets were randomly generated for resources
ranging from 10 to 30 in number, and for product mixes ranging from 5 to 100 in
number. These randomly generated data sets are typical of problem instances
encountered in manufacturing ® rms. Table 4 shows comparative results of the TS-
based heuristic and ILP for the two smaller problems (10 £ 5; 10 £ 10 and 15 £ 10,
15 £ 25). The integer linear programming formulation for the other three larger
problems (20 £ 25 and 20 £ 50, 25 £ 50 and 25 £ 75, 30 £ 75) are extremely cumber-
some and are therefore not included. The TS-based heuristic competes with ILP for
 2074 G. C. Onwubolu

Problem Problem
no. Source size M £ n

1 Lee and Plenert(1993) 4£3

2 Lee and Plenert (1993) 4£3
3 Luebbe and Finch (1992) 4£4
4 Luebbe and Finch (1992) 4£4
5 Patterson (1992) 4£5
6 Plenert (1993) 4£2
7 Plenert (1993) 5£4
8 Posnack (1994) 4£3
9 Posnack (1994) 4£3
10 Mayday (1994) Ð
11 Fredendall and Lea (1997) 6£5
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Table 2a. Description of known problems.

R-TOC ILP TS Improvement

TOC solution solution solution solution of ILP to TS-
No. ($) ($) ($) ($) heuristic (% )

1 6310 6444 6444 6420 0.374

2 6460 6775 6775 6715 0.893
3 6600 6600 6600 6660 Ð
4 9110 9110 9110 8955 1.73
5 8872 8872 9050 8392 7.84
6 4875 4875 4875 4875 Ð
7 Unrealizable 14 370 14 370 14 165 1.447
8 6460 6444 6444 6378 1.035
9 6800 6775 6775 6760 0.222
10 Ð Ð Ð Ð Ð
11 2325 2230 2230 2221 0.405

Table 2b. Performance/comparison of four heuristics.

Product Total CPU time

No. Resources mix throughput (s)

1 10 5 7300 0.05
10 10 12 987 1.76
2 15 10 12 633 2.31
15 25 31 971 32.68
3 20 25 36 837 41.25
20 50 70 335 66.13
4 25 50 72 044 83.65
25 75 104 147 425.30
5 30 75 109 823 329.66

Table 3. Total throughput and CPU times for second problem type.
 Tabu search for the TOC product mix decision 2075

Ts-based
heuristic ILP
Product Total Total
No. Resources mix throughput througput

1 10 5 7300 7340
10 10 12 987 16 384
2 15 10 12 633 13 063
15 25 31 971 **

**Too large for GINO/PC.

Table 4. Comparing TS and ILP for the second problem type.
Downloaded By: [Canadian Research Knowledge Network] At: 13:58 12 September 2010

two of the problems (10 £ 5 and 15 £ 10) but is inferior for the 10 £ 10 problem. The
results for these small size problems show that GINO/PC could not solve the 15 £ 25
problem due to memory space problem. This con® rms the point made earlier in this
paper that optimization algorithms are only best suited for small size problems.

6. Conclusions
This paper proposes a tabu search-based approach for the theory of constraints
product mix problem. The results were found to compare favourably with those
obtained from published literature. However, the published methods were only
applied to simple problems for which optimal solutions can be found using linear
programming technique. When dealing with the problem mix problem with sizes
typical of practical real-life situations, these published techniques become less eŒec-
tive because of prohibitive computational time associated with combinatorial opti-
mization problems. This paper therefore, is a contribution to the product mix
problem in the theory of constraints because tabu search is a heuristic that solves
combinatorial optimization problems with high quality solutions and reasonable
computation times. The tabu search-based heuristic is applied to solve all the prob-
lems published in Frendendall and Lea (1997) which are considered to be of small
sizes. The results obtained are very encouraging and therefore con® rm that tabu
search is appropriate for solving the theory of constraint product mix problem.
Additionally, large problem instances typically encountered in the manufacturing
industry are generated randomly and solved. The results show that the total through-
put values and computation times increase with the problem size. In all the problems
solved, the tabu search-based heuristic found feasible solutions.
To date, the author is not aware of the application of tabu search heuristic to the
theory of constraints product mix problem. This research also indicates some direc-
tions for future research. First, ® nding an initial seed solution from a good heuristic
will signi® cantly improve the tabu search-based heuristic. Secondly, further study of
local search techniques to solve the theory of constraints product mix problem will
be interesting and useful.

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