A robust multi-objective production planning

When a production facility is designed, there are various parameters affecting the number machines such as production capacity and reliability. It is often a tedious task to optimize different objectives, simultaneously. The other issue is the uncertainty in many design parameters which makes it difficult to reach a desirable solution. In this paper, we present a new mathematical model with two objectives. The primary objective function is considered to be the production capacity and the secondary objective function is total reliability. The proposed model is formulated on different units of production which are connected together in serial form and for each unit, we may have various machines. The resulted model is formulated using recent advances of robust optimization and solution procedure is analyzed with some numerical examples

A Parallel Branch and Bound Algorithm for the Resource Leveling Problem with Minimal Lags

[EN] The efficient use of resources is a key factor to minimize the cost while meeting time deadlines and quality requirements; this is especially important in construction projects where field operations take fluctuations of resources unproductive and costly. Resource Leveling Problems (RLP) aim to sequence the construction activities that maximize the resource consumption efficiency over time, minimizing the variability. Exact algorithms for the RLP have been proposed throughout the years to offer optimal solutions; however, these problems require a vast computational capability ( combinatorial explosion ) that makes them unpractical. Therefore, alternative heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms have been suggested in the literature to find local optimal solutions, using different libraries to benchmark optimal values; for example, the Project Scheduling Problem LIBrary for minimal lags is still open to be solved to optimality for RLP. To partially fill this gap, the authors propose a Parallel Branch and Bound algorithm for the RLP with minimal lags to solve the RLP with an acceptable computational effort. This way, this research contributes to the body of knowledge of construction project scheduling providing the optimums of 50 problems for the RLP with minimal lags for the first time, allowing future contributors to benchmark their heuristics meth-ods against exact results by obtaining the distance of their solution to the optimal values. Furthermore, for practitioners,the time required to solve this kind of problem is reasonable and practical, considering that unbalanced resources can risk the goals of the construction project.This research was supported by the FAPA program of the Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia). The authors would like to thank the research group of Construction Engineering and Management (INgeco), especially J. S. Rojas-Quintero, and the Department of Systems Engineering at the Universidad de Los Andes. The authors are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive suggestions.Ponz Tienda, JL.; Salcedo-Bernal, A.; Pellicer Armiñana, E. (2017). A Parallel Branch and Bound Algorithm for the Resource Leveling Problem with Minimal Lags. COMPUTER-AIDED CIVIL AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING. 32:474-498. doi:10.1111/mice.12233S47449832Adeli, H. (2000). High-Performance Computing for Large-Scale Analysis, Optimization, and Control. Journal of Aerospace Engineering, 13(1), 1-10. doi:10.1061/(asce)0893-1321(2000)13:1(1)ADELI, H., & KAMAL, O. (2008). Parallel Structural Analysis Using Threads. Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 4(2), 133-147. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8667.1989.tb00015.xAdeli, H., & Kamal, O. (1992). Concurrent analysis of large structures—II. applications. Computers & Structures, 42(3), 425-432. doi:10.1016/0045-7949(92)90038-2Adeli, H., Kamat, M. P., Kulkarni, G., & Vanluchene, R. D. (1993). High‐Performance Computing in Structural Mechanics and Engineering. Journal of Aerospace Engineering, 6(3), 249-267. doi:10.1061/(asce)0893-1321(1993)6:3(249)Adeli, H., & Karim, A. (1997). Scheduling/Cost Optimization and Neural Dynamics Model for Construction. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 123(4), 450-458. doi:10.1061/(asce)0733-9364(1997)123:4(450)Adeli, H., & Kumar, S. (1995). Concurrent Structural Optimization on Massively Parallel Supercomputer. Journal of Structural Engineering, 121(11), 1588-1597. doi:10.1061/(asce)0733-9445(1995)121:11(1588)ADELI, H., & VISHNUBHOTLA, P. (2008). Parallel Processing. Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 2(3), 257-269. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8667.1987.tb00150.xAdeli, H., & Wu, M. (1998). Regularization Neural Network for Construction Cost Estimation. 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A Metaheuristic-Based Simulation Optimization Framework For Supply Chain Inventory Management Under Uncertainty

The need for inventory control models for practical real-world applications is growing with the global expansion of supply chains. The widely used traditional optimization procedures usually require an explicit mathematical model formulated based on some assumptions. The validity of such models and approaches for real world applications depend greatly upon whether the assumptions made match closely with the reality. The use of meta-heuristics, as opposed to a traditional method, does not require such assumptions and has allowed more realistic modeling of the inventory control system and its solution. In this dissertation, a metaheuristic-based simulation optimization framework is developed for supply chain inventory management under uncertainty. In the proposed framework, any effective metaheuristic can be employed to serve as the optimizer to intelligently search the solution space, using an appropriate simulation inventory model as the evaluation module. To be realistic and practical, the proposed framework supports inventory decision-making under supply-side and demand-side uncertainty in a supply chain. The supply-side uncertainty specifically considered includes quality imperfection. As far as demand-side uncertainty is concerned, the new framework does not make any assumption on demand distribution and can process any demand time series. This salient feature enables users to have the flexibility to evaluate data of practical relevance. In addition, other realistic factors, such as capacity constraints, limited shelf life of products and type-compatible substitutions are also considered and studied by the new framework. The proposed framework has been applied to single-vendor multi-buyer supply chains with the single vendor facing the direct impact of quality deviation and capacity constraint from its supplier and the buyers facing demand uncertainty. In addition, it has been extended to the supply chain inventory management of highly perishable products. Blood products with limited shelf life and ABO compatibility have been examined in detail. It is expected that the proposed framework can be easily adapted to different supply chain systems, including healthcare organizations. Computational results have shown that the proposed framework can effectively assess the impacts of different realistic factors on the performance of a supply chain from different angles, and to determine the optimal inventory policies accordingly

Cost-Based Optimization of Integration Flows

Integration flows are increasingly used to specify and execute data-intensive integration tasks between heterogeneous systems and applications. There are many different application areas such as real-time ETL and data synchronization between operational systems. For the reasons of an increasing amount of data, highly distributed IT infrastructures, and high requirements for data consistency and up-to-dateness of query results, many instances of integration flows are executed over time. Due to this high load and blocking synchronous source systems, the performance of the central integration platform is crucial for an IT infrastructure. To tackle these high performance requirements, we introduce the concept of cost-based optimization of imperative integration flows that relies on incremental statistics maintenance and inter-instance plan re-optimization. As a foundation, we introduce the concept of periodical re-optimization including novel cost-based optimization techniques that are tailor-made for integration flows. Furthermore, we refine the periodical re-optimization to on-demand re-optimization in order to overcome the problems of many unnecessary re-optimization steps and adaptation delays, where we miss optimization opportunities. This approach ensures low optimization overhead and fast workload adaptation

Proceedings of the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics, volume 2

These proceedings contain papers presented at the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics held in Pasadena, January 31 to February 2, 1989. The theme of the Conference was man-machine collaboration in space. The Conference provided a forum for researchers and engineers to exchange ideas on the research and development required for application of telerobotics technology to the space systems planned for the 1990s and beyond. The Conference: (1) provided a view of current NASA telerobotic research and development; (2) stimulated technical exchange on man-machine systems, manipulator control, machine sensing, machine intelligence, concurrent computation, and system architectures; and (3) identified important unsolved problems of current interest which can be dealt with by future research

Design Techniques for Energy-Quality Scalable Digital Systems

Energy efficiency is one of the key design goals in modern computing. Increasingly complex tasks are being executed in mobile devices and Internet of Things end-nodes, which are expected to operate for long time intervals, in the orders of months or years, with the limited energy budgets provided by small form-factor batteries. Fortunately, many of such tasks are error resilient, meaning that they can toler- ate some relaxation in the accuracy, precision or reliability of internal operations, without a significant impact on the overall output quality. The error resilience of an application may derive from a number of factors. The processing of analog sensor inputs measuring quantities from the physical world may not always require maximum precision, as the amount of information that can be extracted is limited by the presence of external noise. Outputs destined for human consumption may also contain small or occasional errors, thanks to the limited capabilities of our vision and hearing systems. Finally, some computational patterns commonly found in domains such as statistics, machine learning and operational research, naturally tend to reduce or eliminate errors. Energy-Quality (EQ) scalable digital systems systematically trade off the quality of computations with energy efficiency, by relaxing the precision, the accuracy, or the reliability of internal software and hardware components in exchange for energy reductions. This design paradigm is believed to offer one of the most promising solutions to the impelling need for low-energy computing. Despite these high expectations, the current state-of-the-art in EQ scalable design suffers from important shortcomings. First, the great majority of techniques proposed in literature focus only on processing hardware and software components. Nonetheless, for many real devices, processing contributes only to a small portion of the total energy consumption, which is dominated by other components (e.g. I/O, memory or data transfers). Second, in order to fulfill its promises and become diffused in commercial devices, EQ scalable design needs to achieve industrial level maturity. This involves moving from purely academic research based on high-level models and theoretical assumptions to engineered flows compatible with existing industry standards. Third, the time-varying nature of error tolerance, both among different applications and within a single task, should become more central in the proposed design methods. This involves designing “dynamic” systems in which the precision or reliability of operations (and consequently their energy consumption) can be dynamically tuned at runtime, rather than “static” solutions, in which the output quality is fixed at design-time. This thesis introduces several new EQ scalable design techniques for digital systems that take the previous observations into account. Besides processing, the proposed methods apply the principles of EQ scalable design also to interconnects and peripherals, which are often relevant contributors to the total energy in sensor nodes and mobile systems respectively. Regardless of the target component, the presented techniques pay special attention to the accurate evaluation of benefits and overheads deriving from EQ scalability, using industrial-level models, and on the integration with existing standard tools and protocols. Moreover, all the works presented in this thesis allow the dynamic reconfiguration of output quality and energy consumption. More specifically, the contribution of this thesis is divided in three parts. In a first body of work, the design of EQ scalable modules for processing hardware data paths is considered. Three design flows are presented, targeting different technologies and exploiting different ways to achieve EQ scalability, i.e. timing-induced errors and precision reduction. These works are inspired by previous approaches from the literature, namely Reduced-Precision Redundancy and Dynamic Accuracy Scaling, which are re-thought to make them compatible with standard Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools and flows, providing solutions to overcome their main limitations. The second part of the thesis investigates the application of EQ scalable design to serial interconnects, which are the de facto standard for data exchanges between processing hardware and sensors. In this context, two novel bus encodings are proposed, called Approximate Differential Encoding and Serial-T0, that exploit the statistical characteristics of data produced by sensors to reduce the energy consumption on the bus at the cost of controlled data approximations. The two techniques achieve different results for data of different origins, but share the common features of allowing runtime reconfiguration of the allowed error and being compatible with standard serial bus protocols. Finally, the last part of the manuscript is devoted to the application of EQ scalable design principles to displays, which are often among the most energy- hungry components in mobile systems. The two proposals in this context leverage the emissive nature of Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) displays to save energy by altering the displayed image, thus inducing an output quality reduction that depends on the amount of such alteration. The first technique implements an image-adaptive form of brightness scaling, whose outputs are optimized in terms of balance between power consumption and similarity with the input. The second approach achieves concurrent power reduction and image enhancement, by means of an adaptive polynomial transformation. Both solutions focus on minimizing the overheads associated with a real-time implementation of the transformations in software or hardware, so that these do not offset the savings in the display. For each of these three topics, results show that the aforementioned goal of building EQ scalable systems compatible with existing best practices and mature for being integrated in commercial devices can be effectively achieved. Moreover, they also show that very simple and similar principles can be applied to design EQ scalable versions of different system components (processing, peripherals and I/O), and to equip these components with knobs for the runtime reconfiguration of the energy versus quality tradeoff

Heuristic ensembles of filters for accurate and reliable feature selection

Feature selection has become increasingly important in data mining in recent years. However, the accuracy and stability of feature selection methods vary considerably when used individually, and yet no rule exists to indicate which one should be used for a particular dataset. Thus, an ensemble method that combines the outputs of several individual feature selection methods appears to be a promising approach to address the issue and hence is investigated in this research. This research aims to develop an effective ensemble that can improve the accuracy and stability of the feature selection. We proposed a novel heuristic ensemble of filters (HEF). It combines two types of filters: subset filters and ranking filters with a heuristic consensus algorithm in order to utilise the strength of each type. The ensemble is tested on ten benchmark datasets and its performance is evaluated by two stability measures and three classifiers. The experimental results demonstrate that HEF improves the stability and accuracy of the selected features and in most cases outperforms the other ensemble algorithms, individual filters and the full feature set. The research on the HEF algorithm is extended in several dimensions; including more filter members, three novel schemes of mean rank aggregation with partial lists, and three novel schemes for a weighted heuristic ensemble of filters. However, the experimental results demonstrate that adding weight to filters in HEF does not achieve the expected improvement in accuracy, but increases time and space complexity, and clearly decreases stability. Therefore, the core ensemble algorithm (HEF) is demonstrated to be not just simpler but also more reliable and consistent than the later more complicated and weighted ensembles. In addition, we investigated how to use data in feature selection, using ALL or PART of it. Systematic experiments with thirty five synthetic and benchmark real-world datasets were carried out

A bi-objective robust inspection planning model in a multi-stage serial production system

International audienceIn this paper, a bi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (BOMILP) model for planning of an inspection process used to detect nonconforming products and malfunctioning processors in a multi-stage serial production system is presented. The model involves two inter-related decisions: 1) which quality characteristics need what kind of inspections (i.e., which-what decision) and 2) when the inspection of these characteristics should be performed (i.e., when decision). These decisions require a trade-off between the cost of manufacturing (i.e., production, inspection and scrap costs) and the customer satisfaction. Due to inevitable variations in the manufacturing systems, a global robust BOMILP (RBOMILP) is developed to tackle the inherent uncertainty of the concerned parameters (i.e., production and inspection times, errors type I and II, misadjustment and dispersion of the process). In order to optimally solve the presented RBOMILP model, a meta-heuristic algorithm, namely differential evolution (DE) algorithm, is combined with the Taguchi and Monte Carlo methods. The proposed model and solution algorithm are validated through a real industrial case from a leading automotive industry in France

Computational intelligence approaches to robotics, automation, and control [Volume guest editors]

No abstract available