Popmusic — Partial Optimization Metaheuristic under Special Intensification Conditions

Abstract

This article introduces POPMUSIC, a meta-heuristic that has been successfully applied to various combinatorial optimization problems. This meta-heuristic is especially useful for designing heuristic methods for large combinatorial problems that can be partially optimized. The basic idea is to optimize sub-parts of solutions until a local optimum is reached. Implementations of the technique to large centroid clustering and to the problem of balancing mechanical parts are shown to be very efficient.