Manpower allocation using genetic annealing

In this paper, we focus on a real size manpower allocation problem. It was modeled after a real world problem of distributing the salesmen force over the branches of a company. The problem includes multiple objectives and the number of salesmen at each branch is unspecified. Conventional integer programming approach and conventional metaheuristics seem to have problems with solving the large size version of this problem. The versatility of our proposed heuristics based on a modification of genetic annealing is exemplified through solving the real size manpower allocation problem. For comparison sake, several small sized versions were solved using our method, conventional integer programming approach, and some well known metaheuristics. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.