the set covering problem (scp) is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem. this paper investigates development of a local branching approach for the scp. this solution strategy is exact in nature, though it is designed to improve the heuristic behavior of the mixed integer programming solver. the algorithm parameters are tuned by design of experiments approach. the proposed method is te...

Operating rooms have become the most important areas in hospitals because of the scarcity and cost of resources. The present study investigates operating room scheduling and rescheduling considering the priority of surgical patients in a specialized hospital. The ultimate purpose of scheduling is to minimize patient waiting time, surgeon idle time between surgeries, and penalties for deviations...

in present paper, a point to point optimal path is planned for a mobile manipulator with flexible links and joints. for this purpose, a perfect dynamic modeling is performed for mobile manipulators considering large deformation in links, shear effects, elastic joints, effect of gravitation, and non-holonomic constraints. to study large deformation of links, non-linear relation of displacement-s...

This study is devoted to discrete sizing optimization of truss structures employing an efficient discrete evolutionary meta-heuristic algorithm which uses the Newton gradient-based method as its updating scheme and it is named here as Newton Meta-heuristic Algorithm (NMA). In order to enable the NMA population-based meta-heuristic to effectively explore the discrete design space, a term contain...

a heuristic way to calculate the approximate value of the casimir force is introduced

this article presents the application of two algorithms: heuristic big bang-big crunch (hbb-bc) and a heuristic particle swarm ant colony optimization (hpsaco) to discrete optimization of reinforced concrete planar frames subject to combinations of gravity and lateral loads based on aci 318-08 code. the objective function is the total cost of the frame which includes the cost of concrete, formw...

entrepreneurs use decision heuristics in lots of their business-related decisions. one of the most important heuristics is affect heuristic which is of paramount importance in entrepreneurs’ decision making. also, entrepreneurial marketing behavior is one of the most important entrepreneurial characteristics which is influenced by entrepreneurial mindset, decision making and thought. the paper’...

this paper deals with a multi-period fixed charge production-distribution problem associated with backorder and inventories. the objective is to determine the size of the shipments from each supplier and backorder and inventories at each period, so that the total cost incurred during the entire period towards production, transportation, backorder and inventories is minimised. a 0-1 mixed intege...

the task of balancing of assembly lines is well-known in mass production system but this problem is np-hard even for the simple straight line. therefore, utilizing heuristic methods for these problems is totally unquestionable. furthermore, in line with balancing problems, heuristic methods are the foundation of the metaheuristic methods, thus it seems to be necessary to use more efficient heur...