Heuristic search procedures that aspire to find global optimal solutions to hard combinatorial optimization problems usually require some type of diversification to overcome local optimality. One way to achieve diversification is to re-start the procedure from a new solution once a region has been explored. In this chapter we describe the best known multi-start methods for solving optimization ...

Test case prioritization (TCP) is aimed at finding an ideal ordering for executing the available test cases to reveal faults earlier. To solve this problem greedy algorithms and meta-heuristics have been widely investigated, but in most cases there is no statistically significant difference between them in terms of effectiveness. The fitness function used to guide meta-heuristics condenses the ...

We consider the following two deterministic inventory optimization problems over a finite planning horizon T with non-stationary demands. • Submodular Joint Replenishment Problem. This involves multiple item types and a single retailer who faces demands. In each time step, any subset of item-types can be ordered incurring a joint ordering cost which is submodular. Moreover, items can be held in...

The target visitation problem (TVP) is concerned with finding a route to visit a set of targets starting from and returning to some base. In addition to the distance traveled a tour is evaluated by taking also preferences into account which address the sequence in which the targets are visited. The problem thus is a combination of two well-known combinatorial optimization problems: the travelin...

This paper presents several optimization problems occurring in VLSI interconnect, Networks on Chip (NoC) design and 3D VLSI integration, all possessing closed-form solutions obtained by well-solvable Quadratic Assignment Problems (QAP). The first type of problems deals with the optimal ordering of signals in a bus bundle such that the switching power, delay and noise interference areminimized.W...

In this paper we develop an inventory model, to determine the optimal ordering quantities, for a set of two substitutable deteriorating items. In this inventory model the inventory level of both items depleted due to demands and deterioration and when an item is out of stock, its demands are partially fulfilled by the other item and all unsatisfied demand is lost. Each substituted item incurs a...

in this paper, a stochastic cell formation problem is studied using queuing theory framework and considering reliability. since cell formation problem is np-hard, two algorithms based on genetic and modified particle swarm optimization (mpso) algorithms are developed to solve the problem. for generating initial solutions in these algorithms, a new heuristic method is developed, which always cre...

The objective of this paper is to deal with the fuzzy conic program- ming problems. The aim here is to derive weak and strong duality theorems for a general fuzzy conic programming. Toward this end, The convexity-like concept of fuzzy mappings is introduced and then a speci c ordering cone is established based on the parameterized representation of fuzzy numbers. Un- der this setting, duality t...

Local search heuristics are among the most popular approaches to solve hard optimization problems. Among them, Very Large Scale Neighborhood Search techniques present a good balance between the quality of local optima and the time to search a neighborhood. We develop a language to generate exponentially large neighborhoods for sequencing problems using grammars. We develop efficient generic dyn...

In blackbox optimization, evaluation of the objective and constraint functions is time consuming. some situations, values may be evaluated independently or sequentially. The present work proposes compares two strategies to define a hierarchical ordering constraints interrupt process at trial point when it detected that will not improve current best solution. Numerical experiments are performed ...