Heuristic methods and applications: A categorized survey

An extensive search of journal publications on heuristic methods and applications produced 442 articles published in 37 journals during the last sixteen years. A scheme is employed to categorize each article according to 12 classes of heuristic approaches and 144 areas of applications (the latter taken from the OR/MS subject classification codes). An analysis of these data reveals some interesting historical patterns and directions for future work. This categorized survey should be helpful to students, teachers, researchers and practitioners interested in heuristics.