A tabu search approach to optimization of drilling operations

This paper reports a tabu-search approach to minimize the cost in hole making processes. Four issues, namely, tool travel scheduling, tool switch scheduling, tool selection, and machining speed specification have been simultaneously addressed in this study. This problem has a structure similar to the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) and hence is NP-complete. To provide an efficient solution procedure, a tabu search approach has been proposed. The performance of the proposed approach is tested using an example problem.