组合最优化，在应用数学和理论计算机科学的领域中，组合优化是在一个有限的对象集中找出最优对象的一类课题。在很多组合优化的问题中，穷举搜索/枚举法是不可行的。组合优化的问题的特征是可行解的集是离散或者可以简化到离散的，并且目标是找到最优解。常见的例子有旅行商问题和最小生成树。二维的例子，比如服装厂做衣服，衣服分成很多块，这些块需要从布料上切下来。怎幺切，剩下的废布料最少？三维的例子，如集装优化。

组合优化的难处，主要是加进来拓扑分析，不同的拓扑形态下，不同部分的约束关系便不同，算法也就要调整。如果给定一个拓扑形态，组合优化往往就退化成一个整数优化的问题了。

In applied mathematics and theoretical computer science, combinatorial optimization is a topic that consists of finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects. In many such problems, exhaustive search is not feasible. It operates on the domain of those optimization problems, in which the set of feasible solutions is discrete or can be reduced to discrete, and in which the goal is to find the best solution. Some common problems involving combinatorial optimization are the traveling salesman problem ("TSP") and the minimum spanning tree problem ("MST").