122,825 research outputs found
Establishment of Linear Sequences
This paper deals with the sequencing problem as an initial step to the study of production system. Sequence may be classified roughly into linear sequence and compound sequence. This paper descrives the systematical method of establishing linear sequences and the problem of minimum transition value as an example of determining an optimum linear sequence. The points to analyze the former are as follows : (1) The representative method of precedence relations. (2) The systematical method of establishing linear sequences. (3) The total number of feasible linear sequences. For these purposes, the fundamental matrix which makes precedence diagram into the form available to theoretical analysis, sequential product as the operational method by which precedence relations can be handled rationally, and then the linear product by which all of the feasible sequences can be established without overlapping have been introduced. Sequences are established easily, systematically and very mechanically by linear product. The technique to pick out the suitable sequences from tremendous feasible sequences is substantial to solve the latter. For this purpose, the concept of Lower Bound has been introduced. The algorithm can assure optimality. It can cope with the case of limitation in calculation time, and gives a suitable approximate solution
Profit-oriented disassembly-line balancing
As product and material recovery has gained importance, disassembly volumes have increased, justifying construction of disassembly lines similar to assembly lines. Recent research on disassembly lines has focused on complete disassembly. Unlike assembly, the current industry practice involves partial disassembly with profit-maximization or cost-minimization objectives. Another difference between assembly and disassembly is that disassembly involves additional precedence relations among tasks due to processing alternatives or physical restrictions. In this study, we define and solve the profit-oriented partial disassembly-line balancing problem. We first characterize different types of precedence relations in disassembly and propose a new representation scheme that encompasses all these types. We then develop the first mixed integer programming formulation for the partial disassembly-line balancing problem, which simultaneously determines (1) the parts whose demand is to be fulfilled to generate revenue, (2) the tasks that will release the selected parts under task and station costs, (3) the number of stations that will be opened, (4) the cycle time, and (5) the balance of the disassembly line, i.e. the feasible assignment of selected tasks to stations such that various types of precedence relations are satisfied. We propose a lower and upper-bounding scheme based on linear programming relaxation of the formulation. Computational results show that our approach provides near optimal solutions for small problems and is capable of solving larger problems with up to 320 disassembly tasks in reasonable time
Algebraic properties of structured context-free languages: old approaches and novel developments
The historical research line on the algebraic properties of structured CF
languages initiated by McNaughton's Parenthesis Languages has recently
attracted much renewed interest with the Balanced Languages, the Visibly
Pushdown Automata languages (VPDA), the Synchronized Languages, and the
Height-deterministic ones. Such families preserve to a varying degree the basic
algebraic properties of Regular languages: boolean closure, closure under
reversal, under concatenation, and Kleene star. We prove that the VPDA family
is strictly contained within the Floyd Grammars (FG) family historically known
as operator precedence. Languages over the same precedence matrix are known to
be closed under boolean operations, and are recognized by a machine whose pop
or push operations on the stack are purely determined by terminal letters. We
characterize VPDA's as the subclass of FG having a peculiarly structured set of
precedence relations, and balanced grammars as a further restricted case. The
non-counting invariance property of FG has a direct implication for VPDA too.Comment: Extended version of paper presented at WORDS2009, Salerno,Italy,
September 200
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
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
Data optimizations for constraint automata
Constraint automata (CA) constitute a coordination model based on finite
automata on infinite words. Originally introduced for modeling of coordinators,
an interesting new application of CAs is implementing coordinators (i.e.,
compiling CAs into executable code). Such an approach guarantees
correctness-by-construction and can even yield code that outperforms
hand-crafted code. The extent to which these two potential advantages
materialize depends on the smartness of CA-compilers and the existence of
proofs of their correctness.
Every transition in a CA is labeled by a "data constraint" that specifies an
atomic data-flow between coordinated processes as a first-order formula. At
run-time, compiler-generated code must handle data constraints as efficiently
as possible. In this paper, we present, and prove the correctness of two
optimization techniques for CA-compilers related to handling of data
constraints: a reduction to eliminate redundant variables and a translation
from (declarative) data constraints to (imperative) data commands expressed in
a small sequential language. Through experiments, we show that these
optimization techniques can have a positive impact on performance of generated
executable code
Multi-armed bandit problem with precedence relations
Consider a multi-phase project management problem where the decision maker
needs to deal with two issues: (a) how to allocate resources to projects within
each phase, and (b) when to enter the next phase, so that the total expected
reward is as large as possible. We formulate the problem as a multi-armed
bandit problem with precedence relations. In Chan, Fuh and Hu (2005), a class
of asymptotically optimal arm-pulling strategies is constructed to minimize the
shortfall from perfect information payoff. Here we further explore optimality
properties of the proposed strategies. First, we show that the efficiency
benchmark, which is given by the regret lower bound, reduces to those in Lai
and Robbins (1985), Hu and Wei (1989), and Fuh and Hu (2000). This implies that
the proposed strategy is also optimal under the settings of aforementioned
papers. Secondly, we establish the super-efficiency of proposed strategies when
the bad set is empty. Thirdly, we show that they are still optimal with
constant switching cost between arms. In addition, we prove that the Wald's
equation holds for Markov chains under Harris recurrent condition, which is an
important tool in studying the efficiency of the proposed strategies.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/074921706000001067 in the IMS
Lecture Notes Monograph Series
(http://www.imstat.org/publications/lecnotes.htm) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
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