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

Intelligent systems in manufacturing: current developments and future prospects

Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are demanding increasing changes in manufacturing environments. Enterprises are required to constantly redesign their products and continuously reconfigure their manufacturing systems. Traditional approaches to manufacturing systems do not fully satisfy this new situation. Many authors have proposed that artificial intelligence will bring the flexibility and efficiency needed by manufacturing systems. This paper is a review of artificial intelligence techniques used in manufacturing systems. The paper first defines the components of a simplified intelligent manufacturing systems (IMS), the different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to be considered and then shows how these AI techniques are used for the components of IMS

Towards a Comprehensible and Accurate Credit Management Model: Application of four Computational Intelligence Methodologies

The paper presents methods for classification of applicants into different categories of credit risk using four different computational intelligence techniques. The selected methodologies involved in the rule-based categorization task are (1) feedforward neural networks trained with second order methods (2) inductive machine learning, (3) hierarchical decision trees produced by grammar-guided genetic programming and (4) fuzzy rule based systems produced by grammar-guided genetic programming. The data used are both numerical and linguistic in nature and they represent a real-world problem, that of deciding whether a loan should be granted or not, in respect to financial details of customers applying for that loan, to a specific private EU bank. We examine the proposed classification models with a sample of enterprises that applied for a loan, each of which is described by financial decision variables (ratios), and classified to one of the four predetermined classes. Attention is given to the comprehensibility and the ease of use for the acquired decision models. Results show that the application of the proposed methods can make the classification task easier and - in some cases - may minimize significantly the amount of required credit data. We consider that these methodologies may also give the chance for the extraction of a comprehensible credit management model or even the incorporation of a related decision support system in bankin

Application of artificial neural network in market segmentation: A review on recent trends

Despite the significance of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithm to market segmentation, there is a need of a comprehensive literature review and a classification system for it towards identification of future trend of market segmentation research. The present work is the first identifiable academic literature review of the application of neural network based techniques to segmentation. Our study has provided an academic database of literature between the periods of 2000-2010 and proposed a classification scheme for the articles. One thousands (1000) articles have been identified, and around 100 relevant selected articles have been subsequently reviewed and classified based on the major focus of each paper. Findings of this study indicated that the research area of ANN based applications are receiving most research attention and self organizing map based applications are second in position to be used in segmentation. The commonly used models for market segmentation are data mining, intelligent system etc. Our analysis furnishes a roadmap to guide future research and aid knowledge accretion and establishment pertaining to the application of ANN based techniques in market segmentation. Thus the present work will significantly contribute to both the industry and academic research in business and marketing as a sustainable valuable knowledge source of market segmentation with the future trend of ANN application in segmentation.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures,3 Table

Soft computing techniques applied to finance

Soft computing is progressively gaining presence in the financial world. The number of real and potential applications is very large and, accordingly, so is the presence of applied research papers in the literature. The aim of this paper is both to present relevant application areas, and to serve as an introduction to the subject. This paper provides arguments that justify the growing interest in these techniques among the financial community and introduces domains of application such as stock and currency market prediction, trading, portfolio management, credit scoring or financial distress prediction areas.Publicad

Optimal Fuzzy Model Construction with Statistical Information using Genetic Algorithm

Fuzzy rule based models have a capability to approximate any continuous function to any degree of accuracy on a compact domain. The majority of FLC design process relies on heuristic knowledge of experience operators. In order to make the design process automatic we present a genetic approach to learn fuzzy rules as well as membership function parameters. Moreover, several statistical information criteria such as the Akaike information criterion (AIC), the Bhansali-Downham information criterion (BDIC), and the Schwarz-Rissanen information criterion (SRIC) are used to construct optimal fuzzy models by reducing fuzzy rules. A genetic scheme is used to design Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) model for identification of the antecedent rule parameters and the identification of the consequent parameters. Computer simulations are presented confirming the performance of the constructed fuzzy logic controller

Meta-heuristic algorithms in car engine design: a literature survey

Meta-heuristic algorithms are often inspired by natural phenomena, including the evolution of species in Darwinian natural selection theory, ant behaviors in biology, flock behaviors of some birds, and annealing in metallurgy. Due to their great potential in solving difficult optimization problems, meta-heuristic algorithms have found their way into automobile engine design. There are different optimization problems arising in different areas of car engine management including calibration, control system, fault diagnosis, and modeling. In this paper we review the state-of-the-art applications of different meta-heuristic algorithms in engine management systems. The review covers a wide range of research, including the application of meta-heuristic algorithms in engine calibration, optimizing engine control systems, engine fault diagnosis, and optimizing different parts of engines and modeling. The meta-heuristic algorithms reviewed in this paper include evolutionary algorithms, evolution strategy, evolutionary programming, genetic programming, differential evolution, estimation of distribution algorithm, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, memetic algorithms, and artificial immune system