Revisiting the Evolution and Application of Assignment Problem: A Brief Overview

The assignment problem (AP) is incredibly challenging that can model many real-life problems. This paper provides a limited review of the recent developments that have appeared in the literature, meaning of assignment problem as well as solving techniques and will provide a review on   a lot of research studies on different types of assignment problem taking place in present day real life situation in order to capture the variations in different types of assignment techniques. Keywords: Assignment problem, Quadratic Assignment, Vehicle Routing, Exact Algorithm, Bound, Heuristic etc

Two-Dimensional Cutting Problem

This paper deals with two-dimensional cutting problems. Firstly the complexity of the problem in question is estimated. Then, several known approaches for the regular (rectangular) and irregular (not necessarily rectangular) cutting problems are described. In the second part, a decision support system for cutting a rectangular sheet of material into pieces of arbitrary shapes, is presented. The system uses two earlier described methods which prefer different types of data and the user may decide which one is more suitable for the problem in question. After brief description of system data files and its manual, some experimental results are presented

Qualitative Characteristics and Quantitative Measures of Solution's Reliability in Discrete Optimization: Traditional Analytical Approaches, Innovative Computational Methods and Applicability

The purpose of this thesis is twofold. The first and major part is devoted to sensitivity analysis of various discrete optimization problems while the second part addresses methods applied for calculating measures of solution stability and solving multicriteria discrete optimization problems. Despite numerous approaches to stability analysis of discrete optimization problems two major directions can be single out: quantitative and qualitative. Qualitative sensitivity analysis is conducted for multicriteria discrete optimization problems with minisum, minimax and minimin partial criteria. The main results obtained here are necessary and sufficient conditions for different stability types of optimal solutions (or a set of optimal solutions) of the considered problems. Within the framework of quantitative direction various measures of solution stability are investigated. A formula for a quantitative characteristic called stability radius is obtained for the generalized equilibrium situation invariant to changes of game parameters in the case of the H¨older metric. Quality of the problem solution can also be described in terms of robustness analysis. In this work the concepts of accuracy and robustness tolerances are presented for a strategic game with a finite number of players where initial coefficients (costs) of linear payoff functions are subject to perturbations. Investigation of stability radius also aims to devise methods for its calculation. A new metaheuristic approach is derived for calculation of stability radius of an optimal solution to the shortest path problem. The main advantage of the developed method is that it can be potentially applicable for calculating stability radii of NP-hard problems. The last chapter of the thesis focuses on deriving innovative methods based on interactive optimization approach for solving multicriteria combinatorial optimization problems. The key idea of the proposed approach is to utilize a parameterized achievement scalarizing function for solution calculation and to direct interactive procedure by changing weighting coefficients of this function. In order to illustrate the introduced ideas a decision making process is simulated for three objective median location problem. The concepts, models, and ideas collected and analyzed in this thesis create a good and relevant grounds for developing more complicated and integrated models of postoptimal analysis and solving the most computationally challenging problems related to it.Siirretty Doriast

New computer-based search strategies for extreme functions of the Gomory--Johnson infinite group problem

We describe new computer-based search strategies for extreme functions for the Gomory--Johnson infinite group problem. They lead to the discovery of new extreme functions, whose existence settles several open questions.Comment: 54 pages, many figure

An Integrated Engineering-Computation Framework for Collaborative Engineering: An Application in Project Management

Today\u27s engineering applications suffer from a severe integration problem. Engineering, the entire process, consists of a myriad of individual, often complex, tasks. Most computer tools support particular tasks in engineering, but the output of one tool is different from the others\u27. Thus, the users must re-enter the relevant information in the format required by another tool. Moreover, usually in the development process of a new product/process, several teams of engineers with different backgrounds/responsibilities are involved, for example mechanical engineers, cost estimators, manufacturing engineers, quality engineers, and project manager. Engineers need a tool(s) to share technical and managerial information and to be able to instantly access the latest changes made by one member, or more, in the teams to determine right away the impacts of these changes in all disciplines (cost, time, resources, etc.). In other words, engineers need to participate in a truly collaborative environment for the achievement of a common objective, which is the completion of the product/process design project in a timely, cost effective, and optimal manner. In this thesis, a new framework that integrates the capabilities of four commercial software, Microsoft Excel™ (spreadsheet), Microsoft Project™ (project management), What\u27s Best! (an optimization add-in), and Visual Basic™ (programming language), with a state-of-the-art object-oriented database (knowledge medium), InnerCircle2000™ is being presented and applied to handle the Cost-Time Trade-Off problem in project networks. The result was a vastly superior solution over the conventional solution from the viewpoint of data handling, completeness of solution space, and in the context of a collaborative engineering-computation environment

Two-dimensional placement compaction using an evolutionary approach: a study

The placement problem of two-dimensional objects over planar surfaces optimizing given utility functions is a combinatorial optimization problem. Our main drive is that of surveying genetic algorithms and hybrid metaheuristics in terms of final positioning area compaction of the solution. Furthermore, a new hybrid evolutionary approach, combining a genetic algorithm merged with a non-linear compaction method is introduced and compared with referenced literature heuristics using both randomly generated instances and benchmark problems. A wide variety of experiments is made, and the respective results and discussions are presented. Finally, conclusions are drawn, and future research is defined

Converting to Optimization in Machine Learning: Perturb-and-MAP, Differential Privacy, and Program Synthesis

On a mathematical level, most computational problems encountered in machine learning are instances of one of four abstract, fundamental problems: sampling, integration, optimization, and search. Thanks to the rich history of the respective mathematical fields, disparate methods with different properties have been developed for these four problem classes. As a result it can be beneficial to convert a problem from one abstract class into a problem of a different class, because the latter might come with insights, techniques, and algorithms well suited to the particular problem at hand. In particular, this thesis contributes four new methods and generalizations of existing methods for converting specific non-optimization machine learning tasks into optimization problems with more appealing properties. The first example is partition function estimation (an integration problem), where an existing algorithm -- the Gumbel trick -- for converting to the MAP optimization problem is generalized into a more general family of algorithms, such that other instances of this family have better statistical properties. Second, this family of algorithms is further generalized to another integration problem, the problem of estimating Rényi entropies. The third example shows how an intractable sampling problem arising when wishing to publicly release a database containing sensitive data in a safe ("differentially private") manner can be converted into an optimization problem using the theory of Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces. Finally, the fourth case study casts the challenging discrete search problem of program synthesis from input-output examples as a supervised learning task that can be efficiently tackled using gradient-based optimization. In all four instances, the conversions result in novel algorithms with desirable properties. In the first instance, new generalizations of the Gumbel trick can be used to construct statistical estimators of the partition function that achieve the same estimation error while using up to 40% fewer samples. The second instance shows that unbiased estimators of the Rényi entropy can be constructed in the Perturb-and-MAP framework. The main contribution of the third instance is theoretical: the conversion shows that it is possible to construct an algorithm for releasing synthetic databases that approximate databases containing sensitive data in a mathematically precise sense, and to prove results about their approximation errors. Finally, the fourth conversion yields an algorithm for synthesising program source code from input-output examples that is able to solve test problems 1-3 orders of magnitude faster than a wide range of baselines

Fuzzy Bilevel Optimization

In the dissertation the solution approaches for different fuzzy optimization problems are presented. The single-level optimization problem with fuzzy objective is solved by its reformulation into a biobjective optimization problem. A special attention is given to the computation of the membership function of the fuzzy solution of the fuzzy optimization problem in the linear case. Necessary and sufficient optimality conditions of the the convex nonlinear fuzzy optimization problem are derived in differentiable and nondifferentiable cases. A fuzzy optimization problem with both fuzzy objectives and constraints is also investigated in the thesis in the linear case. These solution approaches are applied to fuzzy bilevel optimization problems. In the case of bilevel optimization problem with fuzzy objective functions, two algorithms are presented and compared using an illustrative example. For the case of fuzzy linear bilevel optimization problem with both fuzzy objectives and constraints k-th best algorithm is adopted.:1 Introduction 1 1.1 Why optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Fuzziness as a concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 2 1.3 Bilevel problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2 Preliminaries 11 2.1 Fuzzy sets and fuzzy numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2 Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.3 Fuzzy order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.4 Fuzzy functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 3 Optimization problem with fuzzy objective 19 3.1 Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.2 Solution method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.3 Local optimality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.4 Existence of an optimal solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 4 Linear optimization with fuzzy objective 27 4.1 Main approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 4.2 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 4.3 Optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.4 Membership function value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 4.4.1 Special case of triangular fuzzy numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 4.4.2 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 5 Optimality conditions 47 5.1 Differentiable fuzzy optimization problem . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 48 5.1.1 Basic notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 5.1.2 Necessary optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 49 5.1.3 Suffcient optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 5.2 Nondifferentiable fuzzy optimization problem . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 5.2.1 Basic notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 5.2.2 Necessary optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 5.2.3 Suffcient optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 5.2.4 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 6 Fuzzy linear optimization problem over fuzzy polytope 59 6.1 Basic notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 6.2 The fuzzy polytope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 6.3 Formulation and solution method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 65 6.4 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 7 Bilevel optimization with fuzzy objectives 73 7.1 General formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 7.2 Solution approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 7.3 Yager index approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 7.4 Algorithm I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 7.5 Membership function approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78 7.6 Algorithm II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 7.7 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 8 Linear fuzzy bilevel optimization (with fuzzy objectives and constraints) 87 8.1 Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 8.2 Solution approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 8.3 Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 8.4 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 9 Conclusions 95 Bibliography 9