AI and OR in management of operations: history and trends

The last decade has seen a considerable growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for operations management with the aim of finding solutions to problems that are increasing in complexity and scale. This paper begins by setting the context for the survey through a historical perspective of OR and AI. An extensive survey of applications of AI techniques for operations management, covering a total of over 1200 papers published from 1995 to 2004 is then presented. The survey utilizes Elsevier's ScienceDirect database as a source. Hence, the survey may not cover all the relevant journals but includes a sufficiently wide range of publications to make it representative of the research in the field. The papers are categorized into four areas of operations management: (a) design, (b) scheduling, (c) process planning and control and (d) quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis. Each of the four areas is categorized in terms of the AI techniques used: genetic algorithms, case-based reasoning, knowledge-based systems, fuzzy logic and hybrid techniques. The trends over the last decade are identified, discussed with respect to expected trends and directions for future work suggested

Time-constrained project scheduling with adjacent resources

We develop a decomposition method for the Time-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (TCPSP) with Adjacent Resources. For adjacent resources the resource units are ordered and the units assigned to a job have to be adjacent. On top of that, adjacent resources are not required by single jobs, but by job groups. As soon as a job of such a group starts, the adjacent resource units are occupied, and they are not released before all jobs of that group are completed. The developed decomposition method separates the adjacent resource assignment from the rest of the scheduling problem. Test results demonstrate the applicability of the decomposition method. The presented decomposition forms a first promising approach for the TCPSP with adjacent resources and may form a good basis to develop more elaborated methods

Hard or soft: Planning on medium size construction projects

Some data suggest that the approach to planning in construction seeks to impose a managed future on construction work by providing plans which are strictly time scheduled and produced by initially identifying those activities which are critical to the plan and allowing other activities to “fit in” to this critical path. This is referred to in the paper as “hard” planning. The paper seeks to demonstrate that the reality for some managers and planners is that the planning process is “soft” and that in producing plans they seek initially to take account of the vast uncertainties of construction by removing criticality from all activities. The paper is based on data obtained from longitudinal case study research of four live, medium size, projects in the North East of England. The data analysis uses the Grounded Theory approach

An Evaluation of the New York State Workers’ Compensation Pilot Program for Alternative Dispute Resolution

In 1995, the State 0f New York enacted legislation authorizing the establishment of a workers\u27 compensation alternative dispute resolution pilot program for the unionized sector of the construction industry. Collective bargaining agreements could establish an alternative dispute resolution process for resolving claims (including but not limited to mediation and arbitration), use of an agreed managed care organization or list of authorized providers for medical treatment that constitutes the exclusive source of all medical and related treatment, supplemental benefits, return-to-work programs, and vocational rehabilitation programs. The legislation also directed the School ofIndustrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University (ILR) to evaluate compliance with state and federal due process requirements provided in the collective bargaining agreements authorized by this act, and the use, costs and merits of the alternative dispute resolution system established pursuant to this act. In response to this legislative mandate, ILR reviewed the research previously conducted on alternative dispute resolution (ADR), generally, and in workers\u27 compensation. This included examining the purported advantages and disadvantages of ADR, the prevalence of ADR, and published statistical or anecdotal evidence regarding the impact of ADR. ILR created a research design for claimant-level and project-level analyses, and developed data collection instruments for these analyses that included an injured worker survey for ADR claimants and claimants in the traditional (statutory)workers\u27 compensation system, an Ombudsman\u27s log, a manual of data elements pertaining to ADR and comparison group claimants, and interview questions for ADR signatories and other officials. The findings in this report draw upon a comparison of claimant-level, descriptive statistics (averages) for injured workers in the ADR and traditional (statutory) workers\u27 compensation system; the results of more sophisticated, statistical analyses of claimant-level data; and project-level information (including, but not limited to, interviews with ADR signatories and dispute resolution officials)

A hierarchical approach to multi-project planning under uncertainty

We survey several viewpoints on the management of the planning complexity of multi-project organisations under uncertainty. A positioning framework is proposed to distinguish between different types of project-driven organisations, which is meant to aid project management in the choice between the various existing planning approaches. We discuss the current state of the art of hierarchical planning approaches both for traditional manufacturing and for project environments. We introduce a generic hierarchical project planning and control framework that serves to position planning methods for multi-project planning under uncertainty. We discuss multiple techniques for dealing with the uncertainty inherent to the different hierarchical stages in a multi-project organisation. In the last part of this paper we discuss two cases from practice and we relate these practical cases to the positioning framework that is put forward in the paper

Can Component/Service-Based Systems Be Proved Correct?

Component-oriented and service-oriented approaches have gained a strong enthusiasm in industries and academia with a particular interest for service-oriented approaches. A component is a software entity with given functionalities, made available by a provider, and used to build other application within which it is integrated. The service concept and its use in web-based application development have a huge impact on reuse practices. Accordingly a considerable part of software architectures is influenced; these architectures are moving towards service-oriented architectures. Therefore applications (re)use services that are available elsewhere and many applications interact, without knowing each other, using services available via service servers and their published interfaces and functionalities. Industries propose, through various consortium, languages, technologies and standards. More academic works are also undertaken concerning semantics and formalisation of components and service-based systems. We consider here both streams of works in order to raise research concerns that will help in building quality software. Are there new challenging problems with respect to service-based software construction? Besides, what are the links and the advances compared to distributed systems?Comment: 16 page

Dynamic resource constrained multi-project scheduling problem with weighted earliness/tardiness costs

In this study, a conceptual framework is given for the dynamic multi-project scheduling problem with weighted earliness/tardiness costs (DRCMPSPWET) and a mathematical programming formulation of the problem is provided. In DRCMPSPWET, a project arrives on top of an existing project portfolio and a due date has to be quoted for the new project while minimizing the costs of schedule changes. The objective function consists of the weighted earliness tardiness costs of the activities of the existing projects in the current baseline schedule plus a term that increases linearly with the anticipated completion time of the new project. An iterated local search based approach is developed for large instances of this problem. In order to analyze the performance and behavior of the proposed method, a new multi-project data set is created by controlling the total number of activities, the due date tightness, the due date range, the number of resource types, and the completion time factor in an instance. A series of computational experiments are carried out to test the performance of the local search approach. Exact solutions are provided for the small instances. The results indicate that the local search heuristic performs well in terms of both solution quality and solution time