A NEW CRITERIA IMPORTANCE ASSESSMENT (CIMAS) METHOD IN MULTI-CRITERIA GROUP DECISION-MAKING: CRITERIA EVALUATION FOR SUPPLIER SELECTION

Decision-making is a challenging task for logistics managers when solving the supplier selection problem. It is usually affected by numerous conflicting criteria that are not equally important to all decision-makers. Criteria evaluation is one of the crucial parts here. The primary purpose of this paper is to propose a novel integrated criteria importance assessment method based on objective judgment and group decision-making. The developed method is applied to the criteria importance evaluation for supplier selection. First, we proposed the criteria importance assessment (CIMAS) method based on the expert’s opinion, where the years of experts’ experience were given in the form of an expert’s weight. Second, the obtained criteria weights are further integrated within the well-known CRITIC method, and the hybrid criteria weights are determined. The input data matrix is based on the experts’ criteria evaluation on the one-to-ten-point scale. The data were further analyzed by the novel CIMAS method and were utilized within the CRITIC (objective) method. The paper's main contribution is the proposal of the novel CIMAS method. Another contribution is coupling the subjective (CIMAS) and the objective (CRITIC) methods. The results reveal that the most important criterion for supplier selection is on-time distribution, followed by distribution cost, external image and appearance in public, social responsibility rate, and air pollution, respectively. The sensitivity and comparative analysis were also performed, and the technique confirmed a high level of stability

A New K means Grey Wolf Algorithm for Engineering Problems

Purpose: The development of metaheuristic algorithms has increased by researchers to use them extensively in the field of business, science, and engineering. One of the common metaheuristic optimization algorithms is called Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO). The algorithm works based on imitation of the wolves' searching and the process of attacking grey wolves. The main purpose of this paper to overcome the GWO problem which is trapping into local optima. Design or Methodology or Approach: In this paper, the K-means clustering algorithm is used to enhance the performance of the original Grey Wolf Optimization by dividing the population into different parts. The proposed algorithm is called K-means clustering Grey Wolf Optimization (KMGWO). Findings: Results illustrate the efficiency of KMGWO is superior to GWO. To evaluate the performance of the KMGWO, KMGWO applied to solve 10 CEC2019 benchmark test functions. Results prove that KMGWO is better compared to GWO. KMGWO is also compared to Cat Swarm Optimization (CSO), Whale Optimization Algorithm-Bat Algorithm (WOA-BAT), and WOA, so, KMGWO achieves the first rank in terms of performance. Statistical results proved that KMGWO achieved a higher significant value compared to the compared algorithms. Also, the KMGWO is used to solve a pressure vessel design problem and it has outperformed results. Originality/value: Results prove that KMGWO is superior to GWO. KMGWO is also compared to cat swarm optimization (CSO), whale optimization algorithm-bat algorithm (WOA-BAT), WOA, and GWO so KMGWO achieved the first rank in terms of performance. Also, the KMGWO is used to solve a classical engineering problem and it is superiorComment: 15 pages. World Journal of Engineering, 202

On Using Perceptual Loss within the U-Net Architecture for the Semantic Inpainting of Textile Artefacts with Traditional Motifs

It is impressive when one gets to see a hundreds or thousands years old artefact exhibited in the museum, whose appearance seems to have been untouched by centuries. Its restoration had been in the hands of a multidisciplinary team of experts and it had undergone a series of complex procedures. To this end, computational approaches that can support in deciding the most visually appropriate inpainting for very degraded historical items would be helpful as a second objective opinion for the restorers. The present paper thus attempts to put forward a U-Net approach with a perceptual loss for the semantic inpainting of traditional Romanian vests. Images taken of pieces from the collection of the Oltenia Museum in Craiova, along with such images with garments from the Internet, have been given to the deep learning model. The resulting numerical error for inpainting the corrupted parts is adequately low, however the visual similarity still has to be improved by considering further possibilities for finer tuning.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Improved Fitness Dependent Optimizer for Solving Economic Load Dispatch Problem

Economic Load Dispatch depicts a fundamental role in the operation of power systems, as it decreases the environmental load, minimizes the operating cost, and preserves energy resources. The optimal solution to Economic Load Dispatch problems and various constraints can be obtained by evolving several evolutionary and swarm-based algorithms. The major drawback to swarm-based algorithms is premature convergence towards an optimal solution. Fitness Dependent Optimizer is a novel optimization algorithm stimulated by the decision-making and reproductive process of bee swarming. Fitness Dependent Optimizer (FDO) examines the search spaces based on the searching approach of Particle Swarm Optimization. To calculate the pace, the fitness function is utilized to generate weights that direct the search agents in the phases of exploitation and exploration. In this research, the authors have carried out Fitness Dependent Optimizer to solve the Economic Load Dispatch problem by reducing fuel cost, emission allocation, and transmission loss. Moreover, the authors have enhanced a novel variant of Fitness Dependent Optimizer, which incorporates novel population initialization techniques and dynamically employed sine maps to select the weight factor for Fitness Dependent Optimizer. The enhanced population initialization approach incorporates a quasi-random Sabol sequence to generate the initial solution in the multi-dimensional search space. A standard 24-unit system is employed for experimental evaluation with different power demands. Empirical results obtained using the enhanced variant of the Fitness Dependent Optimizer demonstrate superior performance in terms of low transmission loss, low fuel cost, and low emission allocation compared to the conventional Fitness Dependent Optimizer. The experimental study obtained 7.94E-12.Comment: 42 page

An Efficient Gabor Walsh-Hadamard Transform Based Approach for Retrieving Brain Tumor Images from MRI

Brain tumors are a serious and death-defying disease for human life. Discovering an appropriate brain tumor image from a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) archive is a challenging job for the radiologist. Most search engines retrieve images on the basis of traditional text-based approaches. The main challenge in the MRI image analysis is that low-level visual information captured by the MRI machine and the high-level information identified by the assessor. This semantic gap is addressed in this study by designing a new feature extraction technique. In this paper, we introduce Content-Based Medical Image retrieval (CBMIR) system for retrieval of brain tumor images from the large data. Firstly, we remove noise from MRI images employing several filtering techniques. Afterward, we design a feature extraction scheme combining Gabor filtering technique (which is mainly focused on specific frequency content at the image region) and Walsh-Hadamard transform (WHT) (conquer technique for easy configuration of image) for discovering representative features from MRI images. After that, for retrieving the accurate and reliable image, we employ Fuzzy C-Means clustering Minkowski distance metric that can evaluate the similarity between the query image and database images. The proposed methodology design was tested on a publicly available brain tumor MRI image database. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach outperforms most of the existing techniques like Gabor, wavelet, and Hough transform in detecting brain tumors and also take less time. The proposed approach will be beneficial for radiologists and also for technologists to build an automatic decision support system that will produce reproducible and objective results with high accuracy

Optimization and design of an aircraft's morphing wing-tip demonstrator for drag reduction at low speeds, Part II - Experimental validation using Infra-Red transition measurement from Wind Tunnel tests

In the present paper, an ‘in-house’ genetic algorithm was numerically and experimentally validated. The genetic algorithm was applied to an optimization problem for improving the aerodynamic performances of an aircraft wing tip through upper surface morphing. The optimization was performed for 16 flight cases expressed in terms of various combinations of speeds, angles of attack and aileron deflections. The displacements resulted from the optimization were used during the wind tunnel tests of the wing tip demonstrator for the actuators control to change the upper surface shape of the wing. The results of the optimization of the flow behavior for the airfoil morphing upper-surface problem were validated with wind tunnel experimental transition results obtained with infra-red Thermography on the wing-tip demonstrator. The validation proved that the 2D numerical optimization using the ‘in-house’ genetic algorithm was an appropriate tool in improving various aspects of a wing’s aerodynamic performances

Multi-Swarm Algorithm for Extreme Learning Machine Optimization

There are many machine learning approaches available and commonly used today, however, the extreme learning machine is appraised as one of the fastest and, additionally, relatively efficient models. Its main benefit is that it is very fast, which makes it suitable for integration within products that require models taking rapid decisions. Nevertheless, despite their large potential, they have not yet been exploited enough, according to the recent literature. Extreme learning machines still face several challenges that need to be addressed. The most significant downside is that the performance of the model heavily depends on the allocated weights and biases within the hidden layer. Finding its appropriate values for practical tasks represents an NP-hard continuous optimization challenge. Research proposed in this study focuses on determining optimal or near optimal weights and biases in the hidden layer for specific tasks. To address this task, a multi-swarm hybrid optimization approach has been proposed, based on three swarm intelligence meta-heuristics, namely the artificial bee colony, the firefly algorithm and the sine–cosine algorithm. The proposed method has been thoroughly validated on seven well-known classification benchmark datasets, and obtained results are compared to other already existing similar cutting-edge approaches from the recent literature. The simulation results point out that the suggested multi-swarm technique is capable to obtain better generalization performance than the rest of the approaches included in the comparative analysis in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and f1-score indicators. Moreover, to prove that combining two algorithms is not as effective as joining three approaches, additional hybrids generated by pairing, each, two methods employed in the proposed multi-swarm approach, were also implemented and validated against four challenging datasets. The findings from these experiments also prove superior performance of the proposed multi-swarm algorithm. Sample code from devised ELM tuning framework is available on the GitHub

Firefly Algorithm for Cardinality Constrained Mean-Variance Portfolio Optimization Problem with Entropy Diversity Constraint

Portfolio optimization (selection) problem is an important and hard optimization problem that, with the addition of necessary realistic constraints, becomes computationally intractable. Nature-inspired metaheuristics are appropriate for solving such problems; however, literature review shows that there are very few applications of nature-inspired metaheuristics to portfolio optimization problem. This is especially true for swarm intelligence algorithms which represent the newer branch of nature-inspired algorithms. No application of any swarm intelligence metaheuristics to cardinality constrained mean-variance (CCMV) portfolio problem with entropy constraint was found in the literature. This paper introduces modified firefly algorithm (FA) for the CCMV portfolio model with entropy constraint. Firefly algorithm is one of the latest, very successful swarm intelligence algorithm; however, it exhibits some deficiencies when applied to constrained problems. To overcome lack of exploration power during early iterations, we modified the algorithm and tested it on standard portfolio benchmark data sets used in the literature. Our proposed modified firefly algorithm proved to be better than other state-of-the-art algorithms, while introduction of entropy diversity constraint further improved results