en تحقیق در عملیات Operations Research پژوهشي Research The set covering problem (SCP) is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem. This paper investigates development of a local branching approach for the SCP. This solution strategy is exact in nature, though it is designed to improve the heuristic behavior of the mixed integer programming solver. The algorithm parameters are tuned by design of experiments approach. The proposed method is tested on the several standard instances. The results show that the algorithm outperforms the best heuristic approaches found in the literature. heuristics, set covering problem, local branching algorithm, design of experiments 95 102 http://ijiepr.iust.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-94-11&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Masoud Yaghini yaghini@iust.ac.ir 180031947532846003029 180031947532846003029 Yes Iran University of Science and Technology Mohsen Momeni m_momeni@rail.iust.ac.ir 180031947532846003030 180031947532846003030 No Iran University of Science and Technology Mohammadreza Momeni Sarmadi m_sarmadi@rail.iust.ac.ir 180031947532846003031 180031947532846003031 No Iran University of Science and Technology