This paper discusses the application of neural networks to select the best heuristic algorithm to solve a given scheduling problem. The two-stage hybrid owshop with multiple identical parallel machines at the second stage is used as an example to discuss the process of selecting a scheduling heuristic through a neural-network approach. This paper uses the genetic-algorithm-based approach for tr...

In single machine scheduling problems with availability constraints, machines are not available for one or more periods of time. In this paper, we consider a single machine scheduling problem with flexible and periodic availability constraints. In this problem, the maximum continuous working time for each machine increases in a stepwise manner with two different values allowed. Also, the durati...

We present several heuristic algorithms based on tabu search for solving the multi-stage sequence-dependent group scheduling (SDGS) problem by considering minimization of makespan as the criterion. As the problem is recognized to be strongly NP-hard, several meta (tabu) search-based solution algorithms are developed to efficiently solve industry-size problem instances. Also, two different initi...

This paper considers the reliable multi-product multi-vehicle multi-type link logistics network design problem (RMLNDP) with system disruptions, which is concerned with facilities locating, transshipment links constructing, and also allocating them to the customers in order to satisfy their demand on minimum expected total cost (including locating costs, link constructing costs, and also expect...

Coarse grain parallelism inherent in the solution of Linear Programming LP problems with block angular constraint matrices has been exploited in recent research works However these approaches su er from unscalability and load imbalance since they exploit only the exist ing block angular structure of the LP constraint matrix In this paper we consider decomposing LP constraint matrices to obtain ...

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...

In this paper we deal with the two-stage hybrid flow shop with dedicated machines. The objective is to minimize the makespan. We first provide some basic properties, a set of lower bounds and two polynomial cases. We then propose a new heuristic based on the established properties. The heuristic tries to sequence jobs in such a way that the obtained makespan corresponds to the lower bound. In t...

The single-stage scheduling problem to minimize the makespan of identical jobs on uniform parallel machines is known to be solvable in polynomial-time. We extend this work to consider multi-stage systems with flowshop configuration. We show that the 2-stage problem may also be solved in polynomial-time and for the number of stages greater than two, the problem is shown to be NP-hard. We present...