A SURVEY OF SIMULATED ANNEALING APPLICATIONS TO OPERATIONS-RESEARCH PROBLEMS

This paper surveys the application of simulated annealing (SA) to oper ations research (OR) problems. It is concluded that SA has been applie d to both traditional (like single machine, flowshop and jobshop sched uling, lot sizing, traveling salesman problems) and non-traditional (l ike graph coloring, number partitioning) OR areas. It is also conclude d that SA is quite appropriate when the alternative solution method is based on enumeration. SA usually requires more computational resource s in exchange for not being trapped in local optima.