  The set covering problem (SCP) is one of the representative combinatorial
optimization problems, having many practical applications. This paper
investigates the development of an algorithm to solve SCP by employing chemical
reaction optimization (CRO), a general-purpose metaheuristic. It is tested on a
wide range of benchmark instances of SCP. The simulation results indicate that
this algorithm gives outstanding performance compared with other heuristics and
metaheuristics in solving SCP.
