Agent-based transportation planning compared with scheduling heuristics

Here we consider the problem of dynamically assigning vehicles to transportation orders that have di¤erent time windows and should be handled in real time. We introduce a new agent-based system for the planning and scheduling of these transportation networks. Intelligent vehicle agents schedule their own routes. They interact with job agents, who strive for minimum transportation costs, using a Vickrey auction for each incoming order. We use simulation to compare the on-time delivery percentage and the vehicle utilization of an agent-based planning system to a traditional system based on OR heuristics (look-ahead rules, serial scheduling). Numerical experiments show that a properly designed multi-agent system may perform as good as or even better than traditional methods

Production Scheduling

Generally speaking, scheduling is the procedure of mapping a set of tasks or jobs (studied objects) to a set of target resources efficiently. More specifically, as a part of a larger planning and scheduling process, production scheduling is essential for the proper functioning of a manufacturing enterprise. This book presents ten chapters divided into five sections. Section 1 discusses rescheduling strategies, policies, and methods for production scheduling. Section 2 presents two chapters about flow shop scheduling. Section 3 describes heuristic and metaheuristic methods for treating the scheduling problem in an efficient manner. In addition, two test cases are presented in Section 4. The first uses simulation, while the second shows a real implementation of a production scheduling system. Finally, Section 5 presents some modeling strategies for building production scheduling systems. This book will be of interest to those working in the decision-making branches of production, in various operational research areas, as well as computational methods design. People from a diverse background ranging from academia and research to those working in industry, can take advantage of this volume

Modern approaches to modeling user requirements on resource and task allocation in hierarchical computational grids

Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Practical solutions for a dock assignment problem with trailer transportation.

We study a distribution warehouse in which trailers need to be assigned to docks for loading or unloading. A parking lot is used as a buffer zone and transportation between the parking lot and the docks is performed by auxiliary resources called terminal tractors. Each incoming trailer has a known arrival time and each outgoing trailer a desired departure time. The primary objective is to produce a docking schedule such that the weighted sum of the number of late outgoing trailers and the tardiness of these trailers is minimized; the secondary objective is to minimize the weighted completion time of all trailers, both incoming and outgoing. The purpose of this paper is to produce high-quality solutions to large instances that are comparable to a real-life case. We implement several heuristic algorithms: truncated branch and bound, beam search and tabu search. Lagrangian relaxation is embedded in the algorithms for constructing an initial solution and for computing lower bounds. The different solution frameworks are compared via extensive computational experiments.Dock assignment; Multicriteria scheduling; Branch and bound; Beam search; Lagrangian relaxation; Tabu search;

Scheduling in Grid Computing Environment

Scheduling in Grid computing has been active area of research since its beginning. However, beginners find very difficult to understand related concepts due to a large learning curve of Grid computing. Thus, there is a need of concise understanding of scheduling in Grid computing area. This paper strives to present concise understanding of scheduling and related understanding of Grid computing system. The paper describes overall picture of Grid computing and discusses important sub-systems that enable Grid computing possible. Moreover, the paper also discusses concepts of resource scheduling and application scheduling and also presents classification of scheduling algorithms. Furthermore, the paper also presents methodology used for evaluating scheduling algorithms including both real system and simulation based approaches. The presented work on scheduling in Grid containing concise understandings of scheduling system, scheduling algorithm, and scheduling methodology would be very useful to users and researchersComment: Fourth International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication Technologies (ACCT), 201

Evolutionary approaches for scheduling a flexible manufacturing system with automated guided vehicles and robots

This paper addresses the scheduling of machines, an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) and two robots in a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) formed in three loop layouts, with objectives to minimize the makespan, mean flow time and mean tardiness. The scheduling optimization is carried out using Sheep Flock Heredity Algorithm (SFHA) and Artificial Immune System (AIS) algorithm. AGV is used for carrying jobs between the Load/Unload station and the machines. The robots are used for loading and unloading the jobs in the machines, and also used for transferring jobs between the machines. The algorithms are applied for test problems taken from the literature and the results obtained using the two algorithms are compared. The results indicate that SFHA performs better than AIS for this problem