Metaheuristics support managers in decision making with robust tools providing high quality solutions to important problems\nin business, engineering, economics and science in reasonable time horizons. While finding exact solutions in these applications\nstill poses a real challenge despite the impact of recent advances in computer technology and the great interactions between\ncomputer science, management science/operations research and mathematics, (meta-) heuristics still seem to be the methods\nof choice in many (not to say most) applications. In this chapter we give some insight into the state of the art of metaheuristics.\nIt focuses on the significant progress regarding the methods themselves as well as the advances regarding their interplay\nand hybridization with exact methods.