An Efficient Heuristic for the Generalized Assignment Problem

In this paper an efficient heuristic for the generalized assignment problem(GAP) is presented. A new lower bound that is slightly improved by adding the feasibility constraint is used to measure the quality of solutions obtained by the heuristic. The heuristic was tested on a number of large-scale random problems and a large sample of small problems. The heuristic appears to be better than the best previously existing heuristic for GAP. Its effectiveness in comparison of running times and closenesses to lower bound is discussed.