A Meta-Optimization Approach to Solve the Set Covering Problem

Abstract

Context: In the industry the resources are increasingly scarce. For this reason, we must make a good use of it. Being the optimization tools, a good alternative that it is necessary to bear in mind. A realworld problem is the facilities location being the Set Covering Problem, one of the most used models. Our interest, it is to find solution alternatives to this problem of the real-world using metaheuristics. Method: One of the main problems which we turn out to be faced on having used metaheuristic is the difficulty of realizing a correct parametrization with the purpose to find good solutions. This is not an easy task, for which our proposal is to use a metaheuristic that allows to provide good parameters to another metaheuristics that will be responsible for resolving the Set Covering Problem. Results: To prove our proposal, we use the set of 65 instances of OR-Library which also was compared with other recent algorithms, used to solve the Set Covering Problem. Conclusions: Our proposal has proved to be very effective able to produce solutions of good quality avoiding also have to invest large amounts of time in the parametrization of the metaheuristic responsible for resolving the problem