Abstract: Through separating the procedure of search controlling from that of solution updating,an improved versionof simulated annealing method is proposed for combinatorial optimization.The solution obtained by the improvedmethod is always superior(at least not inferior)to that by the original simulated annealing method,especially inthe case that the parameters chosen for simulated annealing are not appropriate,the original method usually givesworse solutions.However,the improved method can still supply satisfying solutions.The improved version alsoprovided an effective way for deciding when Metropolis sampling is to be finished and where the annealing procedure is to be stopped.Furthermore,the improved method has also been used to solve two typical pattern recognition problems.The computer experiment results have shown the effectiveness of the improved method.