# What are the real world applications of set cover problem?

I am studying about set cover problem and wondering that which problems in real world can be solved by set cover. I found that IBM used this problem for their anti-virus problem, so there should be many more others that can be solved by set cover.

So, here's one solution that is used in industry. We use a coverage measurement tool to instrument the program and record which lines of code are covered by each of the million test cases. Then, we choose a small subset $S$ of those million test cases that has maximal coverage: every line of code covered by one of the million test cases will be covered by some test case in $S$. $S$ is called a reduced test suite. We then apply random mutation & testing to the reduced test suite $S$. Empirically, this seems to make random testing more effective. The smaller $S$ is, the more effective and efficient testing becomes.
So, how do we choose a reduced test suite $S$ that is as small as possible, while still achieving maximal coverage? Answer: that's a set cover problem, so we use standard heuristics/approximation algorithms for the set cover problem. The standard greedy approximation algorithm is typically used for this purpose.