Chapter 12 MULTI - START METHODS

Heuristic search procedures that aspire to find global optimal solutions to hard combinatorial optimization problems usually require some type of diversification to overcome local optimality. One way to achieve diversification is to re-start the procedure from a new solution once a region has been explored. In this chapter we describe the best known multi-start methods for solving optimization problems. We propose classifying these methods in terms of their use of randomization, memory and degree of rebuild. We also present a computational comparison of these methods on solving the linear ordering problem in terms of solution quality and diversification power.