This commentary considers the positive and negative consequences of early economic modelling and explores potential future directions. Early economic modelling offers device manufacturers an opportunity to assess the potential value of an innovation at an early stage of development. Early modelling can direct resources into potentially viable technologies and reduce inv...

The paper presents the Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) approach to structural optimization. MINLP is a combined discrete/continuous optimization technique, where discrete binary 0-1 variables are defined for optimization of discrete alternatives and continuous variables for optimization of parameters. The MINLP optimization is performed through three steps: i.e. the generation of a...

In this paper a novel modelling and solving method has been developed to address the so-called resource constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) where project tasks have multiple modes and also the preemption of activities are allowed. To solve this NP-hard problem, a new general optimization via simulation (OvS) approach has been developed which is the main contribution of the current re...

Thermal modelling and optimal design of a solar absorption cooling system are presented, and hourly analysis is performed over the period of a year. Three design parameters are considered, then the Real Parameter Genetic Algorithm (RPGA) is applied to obtain the minimum total annual cost. The optimization results show that the solar cooling optimum configuration needs 1630 square meter collecto...

The contribution deals with simulation-optimization of schedules that are modelled by simple Coloured Petri nets (CPNs). CPN modelling of standard classes of scheduling problems is addressed and compact CPN representations of scheduling problems are proposed. It is shown how a combination of CPN representations with predefined transition sequence conflict resolution strategy can be used to opti...

Numerical modelling and simulation provide an efficient tool for analysis and optimization of device structure design. In this paper we present the analysis and the geometry optimization of the power module with high power pin diode structure supported by the advanced 2-D/3-D mixed-mode electro-thermal device simulation. The structure under investigation is P + NN + power diode device designed ...

In this paper, ongoing work concerning the language modelling and lexicon optimization of a Dutch speech recognition system for Spoken Document Retrieval is described: the collection and normalization of a training data set and the optimization of our recognition lexicon. Effects on lexical coverage of the amount of training data, of decompounding compound words and of different selection metho...