Application of the Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Solving the Set Covering Problem

Table 2

Summary of ABC main elements.

Generation of food sources	A solution to the optimization problem is a food source. It moves in a random way and with base in the low and superior limits of every variable of the problem
Working bees	Their number is proportional to the number of food sources, where for every source there is a working bee, and its function is to evaluate and to modify the current solutions to improve them (it looks for new sources near the current one). If the new position is not better than the current, it will keep the original position
Bees in wait	The number of bees in wait must be proportional to the number of sources. These bees will choose a food source, based on the information of the working bees by means of the waggle dance, where the food source with better value of objective function is selected
Scout bees	These bees generate new sources of food in a random way to replace existing sources that have not been improved
Limit	It defines the maximum number of cycles that a food source can keep without improving before being replaced. The limit increases from the source that is not modified by the bees; already they are used or in wait, up to obtaining its maximum allowed value. After this, the scout bees take charge of initializing the limit to 0 for every new generated position. The limit is initialized to 0 whenever a source is modified (improved) by a used bee or in wait
Column adding	When solving SCP, it defines the number of columns to be added to the current food source
Column elimination	When solving SCP, it defines the number of columns to be eliminated from the current food source