This paper is concerned with an aspect of the design of metaheuristic algorithms, such as evolutionary algorithms, tabu search and ant colony optimization. The topic that is considered is how problems can be represented when they are given to a metaheuristic algorithm. A particular difficulty is presented, viz. the “bottleneck”, where the problem is artificially converted into a new representat...

 Metaheuristic optimization has experienced an evolution toward the development of general purpose optimizers. Although the most effective metaheuristics for the solution of hard (in the computational sense) optimization problems are procedures customized to each particular situation, there is an increased interest in developing systems that can effectively operate as general-purpose solvers. ...

Metaheuristic algorithms will gain more and more popularity in the future as optimization problems are increasing in size and complexity. In order to record experiences and allow project to be replicated, a standard process as a methodology for designing and implementing metaheuristic algorithms is necessary. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no methodology has been proposed in literature ...

Metaheuristic algorithms are one of the most widely used stochastic approaches in solving optimization problems. In this paper, a new metaheuristic algorithm entitled Billiards Optimization Algorithm (BOA) is proposed and designed to be applications. The fundamental inspiration BOA design behavior players rules billiards game. Various steps described then its mathematical model thoroughly expla...

Metaheuristic algorithms are widely used in solving optimization problems. In this paper, a new metaheuristic algorithm called Skill Optimization Algorithm (SOA) is proposed to solve The fundamental inspiration designing SOA human efforts acquire and improve skills. Various stages of mathematically modeled two phases, including: (i) exploration, skill acquisition from experts (ii) exploitation,...

We consider the multi-vehicle one-to-one pickup and delivery problem with split loads, a NP-hard problem linked with a variety of applications for bulk product transportation, bike-sharing systems and inventory re-balancing. This problem is notoriously difficult due to the interaction of two challenging vehicle routing attributes, “pickups and deliveries” and “split deliveries”. This possibly l...

The Annual Crop Planning (ACP) problem was a recently introduced problem in the literature. This study further expounds on this problem by presenting a new mathematical formulation, which is based on market economic factors. To determine solutions, a new local search metaheuristic algorithm is investigated which is called the enhanced Best Performance Algorithm (eBPA). eBPA's results are compar...

This paper addresses the multistage hybrid flow shop (HFS) scheduling problems. The HFS is the special case of flowshop problem. Multiple parallel machines are considered in each stage in the HFS. The HFS scheduling problem is known to be strongly NPhard. Hence, many researchers proposed metaheuristic algorithms for solving the HFS scheduling problems. This paper develops a bat algorithm (BA) t...