Special session — Metaheuristics for routing and packing

Metaheuristics have become important tools for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems. Many significant advances have been made in recent years for conceiving efficient metaheuristics. These advances have motivated applications which, in turn, have created the need to solve even larger problems. This special session solicits novel contributions on metaheuristics applied to routing and packing problems that can be used to efficiently solve these hard problems. Case studies describing successful applications in practice are particularly welcome. Topics for this special issue include (but are not limited to) the following: Cutting stock problems, Packing problems, Knapsack problems, Routing problems and Integrated problems such as cutting and sequencing, lot sizing and cutting, routing and packing, location and routing, etc.