Experimental results on Hillier's linear search

This paper reports an empirical discovery in integer programming. A version of the branch-and-bound approach is used as a control and tested against the same algorithm augmented by the use of Hillier's linear search performed at every node of the search tree. It is shown that the imbedded linear search locates solutions within 1%, and solutions within 5% of the theoretical optimum, which in fact can be seen to have this proximity to the theoretical optimum at the time of termination of computation, over ten times faster than the control.