17,994 research outputs found
Design and Analysis of an Estimation of Distribution Approximation Algorithm for Single Machine Scheduling in Uncertain Environments
In the current work we introduce a novel estimation of distribution algorithm
to tackle a hard combinatorial optimization problem, namely the single-machine
scheduling problem, with uncertain delivery times. The majority of the existing
research coping with optimization problems in uncertain environment aims at
finding a single sufficiently robust solution so that random noise and
unpredictable circumstances would have the least possible detrimental effect on
the quality of the solution. The measures of robustness are usually based on
various kinds of empirically designed averaging techniques. In contrast to the
previous work, our algorithm aims at finding a collection of robust schedules
that allow for a more informative decision making. The notion of robustness is
measured quantitatively in terms of the classical mathematical notion of a norm
on a vector space. We provide a theoretical insight into the relationship
between the properties of the probability distribution over the uncertain
delivery times and the robustness quality of the schedules produced by the
algorithm after a polynomial runtime in terms of approximation ratios
Framework for sustainable TVET-Teacher Education Program in Malaysia Public Universities
Studies had stated that less attention was given to the education aspect, such as
teaching and learning in planning for improving the TVET system. Due to the 21st
Century context, the current paradigm of teaching for the TVET educators also has
been reported to be fatal and need to be shifted. All these disadvantages reported
hindering the country from achieving the 5th strategy in the Strategic Plan for
Vocational Education Transformation to transform TVET system as a whole.
Therefore, this study aims to develop a framework for sustainable TVET Teacher
Education program in Malaysia. This study had adopted an Exploratory Sequential
Mix-Method design, which involves a semi-structured interview (phase one) and
survey method (phase two). Nine experts had involved in phase one chosen by using
Purposive Sampling Technique. As in phase two, 118 TVET-TE program lecturers
were selected as the survey sample chosen through random sampling method. After
data analysis in phase one (thematic analysis) and phase two (Principal Component
Analysis), eight domains and 22 elements have been identified for the framework for
sustainable TVET-TE program in Malaysia. This framework was identified to embed
the elements of 21st Century Education, thus filling the gap in this research. The
research findings also indicate that the developed framework was unidimensional and
valid for the development and research regarding TVET-TE program in Malaysia.
Lastly, it is in the hope that this research can be a guide for the nations in producing a
quality TVET teacher in the future
On the Benefits of Inoculation, an Example in Train Scheduling
The local reconstruction of a railway schedule following a small perturbation
of the traffic, seeking minimization of the total accumulated delay, is a very
difficult and tightly constrained combinatorial problem. Notoriously enough,
the railway company's public image degrades proportionally to the amount of
daily delays, and the same goes for its profit! This paper describes an
inoculation procedure which greatly enhances an evolutionary algorithm for
train re-scheduling. The procedure consists in building the initial population
around a pre-computed solution based on problem-related information available
beforehand. The optimization is performed by adapting times of departure and
arrival, as well as allocation of tracks, for each train at each station. This
is achieved by a permutation-based evolutionary algorithm that relies on a
semi-greedy heuristic scheduler to gradually reconstruct the schedule by
inserting trains one after another. Experimental results are presented on
various instances of a large real-world case involving around 500 trains and
more than 1 million constraints. In terms of competition with commercial math
ematical programming tool ILOG CPLEX, it appears that within a large class of
instances, excluding trivial instances as well as too difficult ones, and with
very few exceptions, a clever initialization turns an encouraging failure into
a clear-cut success auguring of substantial financial savings
A hybrid genetic approach to solve real make-to-order job shop scheduling problems
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro TecnologicoProcedimentos de busca local (ex. busca tabu) e algoritmos genĂ©ticos tĂȘm apresentado excelentes resultados em problemas clĂĄssicos de programação da produção em ambientes job shop. No entanto, estas abordagens apresentam pobres habilidades de modelamento e poucas aplicaçÔes com restriçÔes de ambientes reais de produção tĂȘm sido publicadas. AlĂ©m disto, os espaços de busca considerados nestas aplicaçÔes sĂŁo nomlalmente incompletos e as restriçÔes reais sĂŁo poucas e dependentes do problema em questĂŁo. Este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem genĂ©tica hĂbrida para resolver problemas de programação em ambientes job shop com grande nĂșmero de restriçÔes reais, tais como produtos com vĂĄrios nĂveis de submontagem, planos de processamento altemativos para componentes e recursos alternativos para operaçÔes, exigĂȘncia de vĂĄrios recursos para executar uma operação (ex., mĂĄquina, ferramentas, operadores), calendĂĄrios para todos os recursos, sobreposição de operaçÔes, restriçÔes de disponibilidade de matĂ©ria-prima e componentes comprados de terceiros, e tempo de setup dependente da sequĂȘncia de operaçÔes. A abordagem tambĂ©m considera funçÔes de avaliação multiobjetivas. O sistema usa algoritmos modificados de geração de programação, que incorporam vĂĄrias heurĂsticas de apoio Ă decisĂŁo, para obter um conjunto de soluçÔes iniciais. Cada solução inicial Ă© melhorada por um algoritmo de subida de encosta. EntĂŁo, um algoritmo genĂ©tico hĂbrido com procedimentos de busca local Ă© aplicado ao conjunto inicial de soluçÔes localmente Ăłtimas. Ao utilizar tĂ©cnicas de programação de alta perfomlance (heurĂsticas construtivas, procedimentos de busca local e algoritmos genĂ©ticos) em problemas reais de programação da produção, este trabalho reduziu o abismo existente entre a teoria e a prĂĄtica da programação da produção
Sparse experimental design : an effective an efficient way discovering better genetic algorithm structures
The focus of this paper is the demonstration that sparse experimental design is a useful strategy for developing Genetic Algorithms. It is increasingly apparent from a number of reports and papers within a variety of different problem domains that the 'best' structure for a GA may be dependent upon the application. The GA structure is defined as both the types of operators and the parameters settings used during operation. The differences observed may be linked to the nature of the problem, the type of fitness function, or the depth or breadth of the problem under investigation. This paper demonstrates that advanced experimental design may be adopted to increase the understanding of the relationships between the GA structure and the problem domain, facilitating the selection of improved structures with a minimum of effort
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Combinatorial optimization and metaheuristics
Today, combinatorial optimization is one of the youngest and most active areas of discrete mathematics. It is a branch of optimization in applied mathematics and computer science, related to operational research, algorithm theory and computational complexity theory. It sits at the intersection of several fields, including artificial intelligence, mathematics and software engineering. Its increasing interest arises for the fact that a large number of scientific and industrial problems can be formulated as abstract combinatorial optimization problems, through graphs and/or (integer) linear programs. Some of these problems have polynomial-time (âefficientâ) algorithms, while most of them are NP-hard, i.e. it is not proved that they can be solved in polynomial-time. Mainly, it means that it is not possible to guarantee that an exact solution to the problem can be found and one has to settle for an approximate solution with known performance guarantees. Indeed, the goal of approximate methods is to find âquicklyâ (reasonable run-times), with âhighâ probability, provable âgoodâ solutions (low error from the real optimal solution). In the last 20 years, a new kind of algorithm commonly called metaheuristics have emerged in this class, which basically try to combine heuristics in high level frameworks aimed at efficiently and effectively exploring the search space. This report briefly outlines the components, concepts, advantages and disadvantages of different metaheuristic approaches from a conceptual point of view, in order to analyze their similarities and differences. The two very significant forces of intensification and diversification, that mainly determine the behavior of a metaheuristic, will be pointed out. The report concludes by exploring the importance of hybridization and integration methods
A Comparative Representation Approach to Modern Heuristic Search Methods in a Job Shop
The job shop problem is among the class of NP- hard combinatorial problems. This Research paper addresses the problem of static job shop scheduling on the job-based representation and the rule based representations. The popular search techniques like the genetic algorithm and simulated annealing are used for the determination of the objectives like minimizations of the makespan time and mean flow time. Various rules like the SPT, LPT, MWKR, and LWKR are used for the objective function to attain the results. The summary of results from this paper gives a conclusion that the genetic algorithm gives better results in the makespan time determination on both the job based representation and the rule based representation and the simulated annealing algorithm gives the better results in the mean flow time in both the representations
Efficient Algorithms for Unrelated Parallel Machine Scheduling Considering Time of Use Pricing and Demand Charges
There is an ever-increasing focus on sustainability and energy consumption worldwide. Manufacturing is one of the major areas where energy reduction is not only environmentally beneficial, but also incredibly financially beneficial. These industrial consumers pay for their electricity according to prices that fluctuate throughout the day. These price fluctuations are in place to shift consumption away from âpeakâ times, when electricity is in the highest demand. In addition to this consumption cost, industrial consumers are charged according to their highest level of demand in a given window of time in the form of demand charges. This paper presents multiple solution methods to solve a parallel machine shop scheduling problem to minimize the total energy cost of the production schedule under Time of Use (TOU) and demand charge pricing. The greedy heuristic and genetic algorithm developed are designed to provide efficient solutions to this problem. The results of these methods are compared to a previously developed integer program (IP) solved using CPLEX with respect to the quality of the solution and the computational time required to solve it. Findings of these tests show that the greedy heuristic handles the test problems with only a small optimality gap to the genetic algorithm and optimal IP solution. The largest test problems could not be solved by the genetic algorithm in the provided time period due to difficulty generating an initial solution population. However, when successful the genetic algorithm performed comparably to the CPLEX solver in terms solution quality yet provided faster solve times
Schedule Generation Schemes for Job Shop Problems with Fuzziness
We consider the job shop scheduling problem with fuzzy durations and expected makespan minimisation. We formally define the space of semi-active and active fuzzy schedules and propose and analyse different schedule-generation schemes (SGSs) in this fuzzy framework. In particular, we study dominance properties of the set of schedules obtained with each SGS. Finally, a computational study illustrates the great difference between the spaces of active and the semi-active fuzzy schedules, an analogous behaviour to that of the deterministic job shop.This research has been supported by the Spanish Government under
research grants FEDER TIN2010-20976-C02-02 and MTM2010-
16051 and by the Principality of Asturias (Spain) under grants Severo
Ochoa BP13106 and FC-13-COF13-03
Using micro genetic algorithm for solving scheduling problems
Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) and Timetable scheduling are known to be computationally NPâhard problems. There have been many attempts by many researchers to develop reliable scheduling software, however, many of these software have only been tested or applied on an experimental basis or on a small population with minimal constraints. However in actual model JSSP, the constraints involved are more complicated compared to classical JSSP and feasible schedule must be suggested within a short period of time. In this thesis, an enhanced micro GA, namely micro GA with local search is proposed to solve an actual model JSSP. The scheduler is able to generate an output of a set of feasible production plan not only at a faster rate but which can generate a plan which can reduce the makespan as compare to those using manual. Also, in this thesis, the micro GA is applied to the timetabling problem of Faculty of Electrical Engineering Universiti Teknologi Malaysia which has more than 3,000 students. Apart from having more students, the faculty also offers various different type s of specialized courses. Various constraints such as elective subjects, classrooms capacity, multiple sections students, lecturer, etc have to be taken into consideration when designing the solution for this problem. In this thesis , an enhanced micro GA is proposed for timetable scheduling in the Faculty to overcome the problems. The enhanced micro GA algorithm is referred to as distributed micro GA which has local search to speed up the scheduling process. Comparisons are made with simple GA methods such that a more optimal solution can be achieved. The proposed algorithm is successfully implemented at the Faculty meeting a variety of constraints not achievable using manual methods
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