The multi-level programming problems are attractive for many researchers because of their application in several areas such as economic, traffic, finance, management, transportation and so on. Among these, the bi-level programming problem (BLPP) is an appropriate tool to model these real problems. It has been proven that the general BLPP is an NP-hard problem, so it is a practical and complicated problem therefore solving this problem would be significant. However the literature shows several algorithms to solve different forms of the bi-level programming problems (BLPP), but there is no any hybrid approach of combining of two meta-heuristic algorithms. The most important part of this paper is combining particle swarm optimization (PSO), which is a continuous approach, with a proposed modified genetic algorithm (MGA), which is a discrete algorithm, using a heuristic function and constructing an effective hybrid approaches (PSOMGA). Using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions the BLPP is converted to a non-smooth single level problem, and then it is smoothed by a new heuristic method for using PSOMGA. The smoothed problem is solved using PSOMGA which is a fast approximate method for solving the non-linear BLPP. The presented approach achieves an efficient and feasible solution in an appropriate time which has been evaluated by solving test problems.
