A setup reduction methodology from lean manufacturing for development of meta-heuristic algorithms

We present an application of the Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) methodology used in lean automotive manufacturing for the design and implementation of metaheuristic algorithms. This methodology allows the design of algorithm implementations that are flexible and enables algorithm designers to modify the algorithm's configuration quickly and with a minimum amount of errors. This comes with little downside as measured by computational effort and engenders a wider variety of experimental scenarios to be tested.