Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm and Its Application to Generalized Assignment Problem

There is a trend in the scientific community to model and solve complex optimization problems by employing natural metaphors. This is mainly due to inefficiency of classical optimization algorithms in solving larger scale combinatorial and/or highly non-linear problems. The situation is not much different if integer and/or discrete decision variables are required in most of the linear optimization models as well. One of the main characteristics of the classical optimization algorithms is their inflexibility to adapt the solution algorithm to a given problem. Generally a given problem is modelled in such a way that a classical algorithm like simplex algorithm can handle it. This generally requires making several assumptions which might not be easy to validate in many situations. In order to overcome these limitations more flexible and adaptable general purpose algorithms are needed. It should be easy to tailor these algorithms to model a given problem as close as to reality. Based on this motivation many nature inspired algorithms were developed in the literature like genetic algorithms, simulated annealing and tabu search. It has also been shown that these algorithms can provide far better solutions in comparison to classical algorithms. A branch of nature inspired algorithms which are known as swarm intelligence is focused on insect behaviour in order to develop some meta-heuristics which can mimic insect's problem solution abilities. Ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, wasp nets etc. are some of the well known algorithms that mimic insect behaviour in problem modelling and solution. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) is a relatively new member of swarm intelligence. ABC tries to model natural behaviour of real honey bees in food foraging. Honey bees use several mechanisms like waggle dance to optimally locate food sources and to search new ones. This makes them a good candidate for developing new intelligent search algorithms. In this chapter an extensive review of work on artificial bee algorithms is given. Afterwards, development of an ABC algorithm for solving generalized assignment problem which is known as NP-hard problem is presented in detail along with some comparisons. It is a well known fact that classical optimization techniques impose several limitations on solving mathematical programming and operational research models. This is mainly due to inherent solution mechanisms of these techniques. Solution strategies of classical optimization algorithms are generally depended on the type of objective and constraint