A genetic algorithm for vehicle routing problems with stochastic demand and soft time windows

This paper studies the stochastic vehicle routing problem with soft time windows (SVRPSTW). Vehicles with limited capacity are routed from the central depot to a set of geographically dispersed customers with unknown demands, predefined presence probability and time windows. The late arrival at the customer is allowed by adding a penalty to the objective value. A mathematical model is developed to describe the behavior of this kind of delivery system. A novel age based genetic scheduling algorithm is proposed as an optimization tool to solve this intractable vehicle routing problem in order to minimize the total cost. The effectiveness of the proposed scheduling algorithm is illustrated by using a set of randomly generated numerical examples. The results indicate that the proposed genetic approach is a simple but effective means for solving these problems.published_or_final_versio

Recurrent abdominal pain in paediatric patients

Recurrent abdominal pain is a common problem in the paediatric population. While functional abdominal pain accounts for the majority of cases, an organic cause for pain may be found in about 5% to 10% of children. Diagnostic evaluation depends on the clinical presentation and the presence of specific findings. Excessive testing should be avoided as this may increase parental anxiety and put the child through unnecessary stress.published_or_final_versio

Optimal morphological filter design for fabric defect detection

This paper investigates the problem of automated defect detection for textile fabrics and proposes a new optimal morphological filter design method for solving this problem. Gabor Wavelet Network (GWN) is adopted as a major technique to extract the texture features of textile fabrics. An optimal morphological filter can be constructed based on the texture features extracted. In view of this optimal filter, a new semi-supervised segmentation algorithm is then proposed. The performance of the scheme is evaluated by using a variety of homogeneous textile images with different types of common defects. The test results exhibit accurate defect detection with low false alarm, thus confirming the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed scheme. In addition, it can be shown that the algorithm proposed in this paper is suitable for on-line applications. Indeed, the proposed algorithm is a low cost PC based solution to the problem of defect detection for textile fabrics. © 2005 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

POPIM: Pragmatic online project information management for collaborative product development

POPIM (Pragmatic Online Project Information Management) is a prototype web-based platform for managing collaborative product development projects within an extended enterprise environment. A suite of facilities are provided for geographically dispersed project team members to communicate, share, and collaborate on a project in a common workspace where they enjoy online access to the most up to date project information and maintain a high-level data consistency and accumulate experience and knowledgebase. In addition to standard project management functionality such as defining work structure breakdowns, determining work schedules, teaming up with specialists, and allocating resources, POPIM incorporates workflow management (including dependency management), and deliverable management (document management if documents are considered as one kind of deliverables). Individual members have their personalized accounts according to their skills and roles/responsibilities in a project. A project team and its members may maintain their own journals/records. More application-specific functions such as product design review and engineering change management can be implicitly performed through online document forms.published_or_final_versio

Machine requirements planning and workload assignment using genetic algorithms

This paper presents a genetic approach to determining the optimal number of machines required in a manufacturing system for meeting a specified production schedule. This use of genetic algorithms is illustrated by solving a typical machine requirements planning problem. Comparison of the respective results obtained by using the proposed approach and a standard mixed-integer programming package shows that the proposed approach is indeed an effective means for optimal manufacturing systems design.published_or_final_versio

An intelligent robotic framework for automated assembly

Recent applications of robots for industrial automation have shown significant improvement in manufacturing processes in terms of reducing labor participation, enhancing flexibility, efficiency and quality of the products. However, most applications are limited to point-to-point and noninteractive operations in which the availability of a highly structured setup is a prerequisite. This prompts the vast emergency of researches on intelligent robotics that are aimed to improve the adaptability, flexibility and dexterity so as to enhance the intelligence of industrial robots. This paper investigates the designs of intelligent robotic systems and discusses the proposed criteria required to achieve an intelligent robotic system. A proposed conceptual framework for robotic assembly is then presented that contains two main parts, namely, a robotic state recognizer and a control strategy generator. In addition to these two components, the integration of compliant motion control into the framework will be described. An example of using the proposed framework to develop a robotic assembly system is given.published_or_final_versio

A real-time computer vision system for detecting defects in textile fabrics

This paper proposes a real-time computer vision system for detecting defects in textile fabrics. The developments of both the hardware and software platforms are presented. The design of the prototyped defect detection system ensures that the fabric moves smoothly and evenly so that high quality images can be captured. The paper also proposes a new filter selection method to detect fabric defects, which can automatically tune the Gabor functions to match with the texture information. The filter selection method is further developed into a new defect segmentation algorithm. The scheme is tested both on-line and off-line by using a variety of homogeneous textile images with different defects. The results exhibit accurate defect detection with low false alarm, thus confirming the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed system. © 2005 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Immunity-based evolutionary algorithm for optimal global container repositioning in liner shipping

Global container repositioning in liner shipping has always been a challenging problem in container transportation as the global market in maritime logistics is complex and competitive. Supply and demand are dynamic under the ever changing trade imbalance. A useful computation optimization tool to assist shipping liners on decision making and planning to reposition large quantities of empty containers from surplus countries to deficit regions in a cost effective manner is crucial. A novel immunity-based evolutionary algorithm known as immunity-based evolutionary algorithm (IMEA) is developed to solve the multi-objective container repositioning problems in this research. The algorithm adopts the clonal selection and immune suppression theories to attain the Pareto optimal front. The proposed algorithm was verified with benchmarking functions and compared with four optimization algorithms to assess its diversity and spread. The developed algorithm provides a useful means to solve the problem and assist shipping liners in the global container transportation operations in an optimized and cost effective manner. © 2010 The Author(s).published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 21 Feb 201

Web-based product design review: Implementation perspective

Product design review is one of the typical scenarios of collaborative product development. We developed a web-based prototype framework for supporting the collaborative tele-product design review on the Internet. It provides a suite of tools to establishing and management the new product design review process. This paper discusses the issues related to the development and implementation of web application in prototype implication. The typical 3-tier architecture is explained to show how the CyberReview components work together to achieve the intended functionality. The VRML EAI and Java Applet-Servlet pair technology was included to support the implication.published_or_final_versio

Online leadership discourse in higher education: a digital multimodal discourse perspective

As leadership discourses in higher education are increasingly being mediated online, texts previously reserved for staff are now being made available in the public domain. As such, these texts become accessible for study, critique and evaluation. Additionally, discourses previously confined to the written domain are now increasingly multimodal. Thus, an approach is required that is capable of relating detailed, complex multimodal discourse analyses to broader sociocultural perspectives to account for the complex meaning-making practices that operate in online leadership discourses. For this purpose, a digital multimodal discourse approach is proposed and illustrated via a small-scale case study of the online leadership discourse of an Australian university. The analysis of two short video texts demonstrates how a digital multimodal discourse perspective facilitates the identification of key multimodal systems used for meaning-making in online communication, how meaning arises through combinations of semiotic choices (not individual choices), and how the results of multimodal discourse analysis using digital technology can reveal larger sociocultural patterns – in this case, divergent leadership styles and approaches as reflected in online discourse, at a time of immense change within the higher education sector