This article addresses a multi-stage flowshop scheduling problem with equal number of unrelated parallel machines. The objective is to minimize the makespan for a given set of jobs in the system. This problem class is NP-hard in the strong sense, so a hybrid heuristic method for sequencing and then allocating operations of jobs to machines is developed. A number of test problems are randomly ge...

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Why Is Cartographic Generalization So Hard? Andrew U. Frank Department for Geoinformation and Cartography Gusshausstrasse 27-29/E-127-1 A-1040 Vienna, Austria [email protected]

41 address those needs—thereby making measurement more appealing. While the disparity discussed here involves measurement, it applies to all areas of software process improvement. For example, the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model for Software is silent on two of the three strategies of high-performing organizations—customer intimacy and product innovation. Like traditi...

Conventional economic theory, coupled with standard preference parameters predict that labor supply should fall markedly over time. However, this contradicts the empirical reality that labor supply rises at the very onset of economic development, subsequently tends to fall, and then stabilizes. This paper addresses this pattern of labor supply over time, and explains it via the proliferation of...

my isn't there more progress toward building systems f+om existing parts? One ansueT is that the assumptions of the parts about their intended environment are implicit and either don't match the actual environment oy conflict with those of other parts. The authors explore these problems in the context of their own experience with a compositional approach. F uture breakthroughs in software produ...

Despite years of work, no re-usable clinical terminology has yet been demonstrated in widespread use. This paper puts forward ten reasons why developing such terminologies is hard. All stem from underestimating the change entailed in using terminology in software for 'patient centred' systems rather than for its traditional functions of statistical and financial reporting. Firstly, the increase...