On local search for weighted k-set packing

Given a collection of sets of cardinality at most k, with weights for each set, the maximum weighted packing problem is that of finding a collection of disjoint sets of maximum total weight. We study the worst case behavior of the t-local search heuristic for this problem proving a tight bound of k - 1 + 1/t. As a consequence, for any given r < 1/(k - 1) we can compute in polynomial time a solution whose weight is at least r times the optimal.