A Multi-heuristic Algorithmic Skeleton for Hard Combinatorial Optimization Problems

In the present paper we discuss a multi-heuristic optimization technique for hard combinatorial optimization problems and outline its algorithmic skeleton. The proposed technique is based on a combination of heuristics commonly used in the area of combinatorial optimization and two branch-and-bound methods. Preliminary results show that this approach can be applied to different hard combinatorial optimization problems and is suitable for the construction of anytime algorithms.