Binary ant colony optimization applied to variable screening in the Mahalanobis–Taguchi System

This work presents the application of the Mahalanobis–Taguchi System (MTS) to a dimensional problem in the automotive industry. The combinatorial optimization problem of variable selection is solved by the application of a recent version of binary ant colony optimization algorithm. Moreover, a comparison with respect to binary particle swarm optimization algorithm is also presented and a discussion regarding the numerical results is given.

► Hybrid Mahalanobis–Taguchi System (MTS) using binary PSO is applied in automotive industry.
► First time that a novel binary ants colony optimization (NBACO) is combined with MTS.
► A numerical comparison between binary PSO and NBACO is presented.