Coupling ant colony systems with strong local searches

Ant colony system is a well known metaheuristic framework, and many efficient algorithms for different combinatorial optimization problems have been derived from this general framework. In this paper some directions for improving the original framework when a strong local search routine is available, are identified. In particular, some modifications able to speed up the method and make it competitive on large problem instances, on which the original framework tends to be weaker, are described. The resulting framework, called Enhanced Ant Colony System is tested on three well-known combinatorial optimization problems arising in the transportation field. Many new best known solutions are retrieved for the benchmarks available for these optimization problems.