Pure and Hybrid Metaheuristics for the Response Time Variability Problem

Metaheuristics are a powerful tool for solving hard optimisation problems. Moreover, metaheuristic hybrid optimisation techniques can be applied to develop an improved metaheuristic algorithm for a given problem. It is known that some metaheuristics perform better than others for each problem. However, there is a lack of theoretical basis to explain why a metaheuristic performs well (or bad) when solving a problem, and there is not a general guide to design specific hybrid metaheuristics. In this chapter, the authors describe the response time variability problem (RTVP), which is an NP-hard combinatorial optimisation problem that appears in a wide range of engineering and business applications. They show how to solve this problem by means of metaheuristics and how to design specific hybrid metaheuristics for the RTVP. This may be useful to managers, engineers, researchers, and scientists to deal with other types of optimisation problems.