The objective of this work is to improve variant table evaluation in a configurator by compiling/compressing the tables individually to reduce both processing time and space. The main result is a proposed simple heuristic for decomposing the variant table into subtables and a representation linking these subtables in a directed acyclic graph (DAG). The size of the compression obtained by this h...

The present paper is an attempt to develop a new heuristic algorithm, find the optimal sequence to minimize the utilization time of the machines and hence their rental cost for two stage specially structured flow shop scheduling under specified rental policy in which processing times and set up time are associated with their respective probabilities including transportation time. Further jo...

The larval morphology of Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius) is presented using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Extreme similarity of this species to Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart), a species usually found concurrently inhabiting decomposing human corpses in Thailand, is seen only in the first-instar larvae. The relative thickness of the branches of the posterior spiracular hairs in these sp...

In this paper we propose a hybrid heuristic solution procedure for fuel cost minimization on gas transmission systems with a cyclic network topology, that is, networks with at least one cycle containing two or more compressor station arcs. Our heuristic solution methodology is based on a two-stage iterative procedure. In a particular iteration, at a first stage, gas flow variables are fixed in ...

There is a growing interest towards self configuring/tuning automated general-purpose reusable heuristic approaches for combinatorial optimisation, such as, hyper-heuristics. Hyper-heuristics are search methodologies which explore the space of heuristics rather than the solutions to solve a broad range of hard computational problems without requiring any expert intervention. There are two commo...

Hyper-heuristics have emerged as automated high level search methodologies that manage a set of low level heuristics for solving computationally hard problems. A generic selection hyper-heuristic combines heuristic selection and move acceptance methods under an iterative single point-based search framework. At each step, the solution in hand is modified after applying a selected heuristic and a...

One important issue regarding the implementation of cellular manufacturing systems relates to deciding whether to convert an existing job shop into a cellular manufacturing system comprehensively in a single go, or in stages incrementally by forming cells one after the other taking the advantage of the experiences of implementation. In this paper two heuristic methods based on multi-stage progr...

The Cubic Cell Formation Problem (CCFP) in cellular manufacturing systems consists decomposing a production system into set of cells, and assigning workers to cells besides parts machines. major objective is obtain manageable cells. Manageable mean with minimum value inter-cell moves heterogeneity within In this paper, solution methodology based on modified simulated annealing heuristic propose...