1 USE OF A GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR BUILDING EFFICIENT CHOICE DESIGNS Jesús Muñuzuri * Department of Industrial Management and Business Administration II, School of Engineering, University of Seville, Spain E-mail: munuzuri@esi.us.es *Corresponding author Pablo Cortés Department of Industrial Management and Business Administration II, School of Engineering, University of Seville, Spain E-mail: pca@esi.us.es María Rodríguez Department of Industrial Management and Business Administration II, School of Engineering, University of Seville, Spain E-mail: mariarodriguez@us.es Rafael Grosso Department of Industrial Management and Business Administration II, School of Engineering, University of Seville, Spain E-mail: rgrosso@us.es Abstract: Choice design building based on D-error minimization can be accomplished either by using predefined β values or by assuming probabilistic distributions for them. Several mathematical techniques have been used for both approaches in the past, resulting in algorithms that obtain efficient designs, which guarantee the high quality of the information that will be provided by the respondents. This paper proposes the use of a genetic algorithm for dealing with the problem of building designs with minimum D-error, describing the technique and applying it successfully to several benchmark cases. Design matrices, D-error values, percentages of level overlap and computation times are provided for each case. Keywords: Discrete choice; design building; D-error; genetic algorithm. Reference to this paper should be made as follows:. Biographical notes: Jesús Muñuzuri is Associate Professor at the University of Seville. His background includes a BSc in Industrial Engineering at the University of Seville, an MSc in Industrial Design and Production at the University of Wales Swansea and a PhD in Organisation Engineering at the University of Seville. His main fields of work, where he has published numerous research papers in international journals and completed many R&D projects, include logistics and transport, production management and the application of operations research to industrial engineering problems. Pablo Cortés Achedad, Professor in Industrial Engineering at the University of Seville, PhD in Industrial Engineering by the same University where he obtained a Special Doctoral Award in Industrial Engineering. Research interests focus on the fields: Soft Computing, Computational Intelligence, Operations Research, transport and logistics, telecommunication networks, and vertical transportation. He has been appointed as Guest Editor for several international journals. He has also been Project Leader in 3 projects of the Spanish Research and Development Programme, as well as project leader in numerous technology transfer projects funded by different national and international programmes. He is Leader Project in 14 research contracts with private companies and inventor of 3 patents