COMBINATION METHODS FOR SOLVING QUADRATIC ASSIGNMENT PROBLEM

The quadratic assignment problem is a combinatorial problem of deciding the placement of facilities in specified locations in such a way as to minimize a nonconfex objective function expressed in terms of flow between facilities, and distance between location. Due to the non-convexity nature of the problem, therefore to get a 'good' starting point is necessary in order to obtain a better optimal solution. In this paper we propose a Combination Methods (random point strategy to get initial starting point and then use forward exchange strategy and backward exchange strategy) to get 'optimal' solution. As a computational experience we solve the problem of Had12, Esc 16b, Esc 16c and Esc 16h from QAPLIB. Finally, we present a comparative study between Combination Methods and Data-Guided Lexisearch Algorithm. The computational study shows the effectiveness of our proposed combination methods.