Meta-heuristics have already received considerable attention in various fields of engineering optimization problems. Each of them employes some key features best suited for a specific class of problems due to its type of search space and constraints. The present work develops a Pseudo-random Directional Search, PDS, for adaptive combination of such heuristic operators. It utilizes a short term...

In today’s dynamic market, organizations must be adaptive to market fluctuations. In addition, studies show that material-handling cost makes up between 20 and 50 percent of the total operating cost. Therefore, this paper considers the problem of arranging and rearranging, when there are changes in product mix and demand, manufacturing facilities such that the sum of material handling and rearr...

This paper presents a new mathematical model, in which the location of hubs is fixed and their capacity is determined based on facilities and factories allocated to it. In order to feed the client's nodes, different types of vehicles of different capacities are considered, in which the clients are allocated to hubs, and types and numbers of vehicles are allocated to the factory's facilities. To...

This paper develops Order Acceptance for an Integrated Production-Distribution Problem in which Batch Delivery is implemented. The aim of this problem is to coordinate: (1) rejecting some of the orders (2) production scheduling of the accepted orders and (3) batch delivery to maximize Total Net Profit. A Mixed Integer Programming is proposed for the problem. In addition, a hybrid meta-heuristic...

The Robust Coloring Problem (RCP) is a generalization of the well-known Graph Coloring Problem where we seek for a solution that remains valid when extra edges are added. The RCP is used in scheduling of events with possible last-minute changes and study frequency assignments of the electromagnetic spectrum. This problem has been proved as NP-hard and in instances larger than 30 vertices, meta-...

In this paper an effort is made to present a state-of-the-art review of meta-heuristic approaches in solving facility layout problems. Facility layout directly affects the productivity of the industries so it is very important to solve it carefully. There are many approaches, methods and techniques to solve and optimize the layout problem. The current and future trends involving design objectiv...

We describe three experiments using meta-language and meta-reasoning to solve problems involving belief, heuristics, and points of view. These experiments use the knowledge representation system SPHERE, built at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and based on the ideas of FOL [20]. A key idea underlying our research is the segmentation of knowledge into contexts and the meta-linguistic treatment of t...

In this paper we prove that in some practical situations, there is a free lunch for hyper-heuristics, i.e., for search algorithms that search the space of solvers, searchers, meta-heuristics and heuristics for problems. This has consequences for the use of genetic programming as a method to discover new search algorithms and, more generally, problem solvers. Furthermore, it has also rather impo...

This study presents shape optimization of a gravity dam imposing stability and principal stress constraints. A gravity dam is a large scale hydraulic structure consisting of huge amount of concrete material. Hence, an optimum design gives a cost-benefit structure due to the fact that small changes in shape of dam cross-section leads to large saving of concrete volume. T...