Stochastic Search in Metaheuristics

Knowledge-guided local search for the vehicle routing problem

“…This determinism simplifies its analysis and the evaluation of its performance. In contrast, most state-of-the-art heuristics utilize randomness to diversify the search and escape local minima (Gutjahr, 2010). The exact role and the benefits of including random elements are rarely investigated, notwithstanding the fact that reliance on randomness has some significant disadvantages and, according to some researchers, can prevent the development of better, deterministic search components, see e.g., Glover (2007).…”