A multistage approach for an employee timetabling problem with a high diversity of shifts as a solution for a strongly varying workforce demand

This work deals with the employee rostering problem at the airport. Such problems, related to the time varying demand of the transport services, use many (e.g., about a hundred) diverse shifts to cover the workforce demand during the day. Together with the strict constraints, given by the collective agreement, the problem becomes difficult to solve. Algorithms commonly used for solving the usual employee rostering problems produce poor quality rosters, which are unusable in practice. This paper suggests a three stage approach allowing one to solve the employee rostering problems where a huge set of different shifts is used to satisfy the coverage requirements. The solution is based on the problem transformation to a simpler problem, thereupon, an evolutionary algorithm is used to determine a rough position of the shifts in the roster. Afterwards, the maximal weighted matching in the bipartite graph is applied as the inverse transformation of the problem and the final roster is obtained by the optimization based on a Tabu Search algorithm. This multistage approach is compared to other approaches. Furthermore, an evaluation methodology was proposed in order to make a complex and fair comparison. Its objective is to verify the contribution of the particular stages used in the different approaches applied on the different personnel scheduling problems.     

Enhanced genetic algorithms for a bi‐objective bus driver rostering problem: a computational study

In this work, the bus driver rostering problem is considered in the context of a noncyclic rostering, with two objectives representing either the company or the drivers’ interests. A network model and a proof of the NP‐hardness of the problem are presented, along with a bi‐objective memetic algorithm that combines a specific decoder with a utopian/lexicographic elitism, a strength Pareto fitness evaluation, and a local search procedure. By taking real and benchmark instances the computational behavior of the memetic algorithm is compared with simpler versions to assess the effects of the embedded components. The developed algorithm is a valuable tool for bus companies’ planning departments insofar as it yields at low computing times a pool of good quality rosters that reconcile contradictory objectives. This study shows that simple enhancements in standard bi‐objective genetic algorithms may improve the results for this difficult combinatorial problem.     

Fuzzy multicriterion design using immune network simulation

Structural optimization problems have been traditionally formulated in terms of crisply defined objective and constraint functions. With a shift in application focus towards more practical problems, there is a need to incorporate fuzzy or noncrisp information into an optimization problem statement. Such practical design problems often deal with the allocation of resources to satisfy multiple, and frequently conflicting design objectives. The present paper deals with a genetic algorithm based optimization procedure for solving multicriterion design problems where the objective or constraint functions may not be crisply defined. The approach uses a genetic algorithm based simulation of the biological immune system to solve the multicriterion design problem; fuzzy set theory is adopted to incorporate imprecisely defined information into the problem statement. A notable strength of the proposed approach is its ability to generate a Pareto-Edgeworth front of compromise solutions in a single execution of the GA. Received May 8, 2000     

A GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR THE ECONOMIC MANPOWER SHIFT PLANNING PROBLEM

A modified genetic algorithm (GA) is presented for the solution of the economic manpower shift planning (EMSP) problem. This is an NP-hard capacity planning problem arising in various industrial settings including the packing stage of production in process industries and maintenance operations. Given a set of independent jobs, their production targets, and a planning horizon, EMSP seeks the manpower to be planned for each workday shift in order to complete all the jobs within the specified time horizon at minimum cost. These are the key innovative aspects of the developed GA: (1) it uses a problem-specific encoding of the solution structure at the genotypic level; (2) it adopts a special greedy algorithm for mapping genotypes to phenotypes (i.e., to actual EMSP solutions); (3) it employs an adaptive parameter control scheme to adjust the mutation rate during its run. Extensive experiments over various industrial simulated environments and comparisons with the best existing EMSP heuristic (namely the block planning greedy algorithm) show the superiority of the proposed solution approach in terms of solution quality. Furthermore, comparisons to the results obtained by the standard CPLEX optimizer showed the proposed solution's performance to be very satisfactory.     

A genetic algorithm approach to a nurse rerostering problem

The nurse rerostering problem occurs when one or more nurses cannot work in shifts that were previously assigned to her or them. If no pool of reserve nurses exists to replace those absent, then the current roster must be rebuilt. This new roster must comply with the labour rules and institutional constraints. Moreover, it must be as similar as possible to the current one. The present paper describes constructive heuristics, besides several versions of genetic algorithms based on specific encoding and operators for sequencing problems applied to the nurse rerostering problem, defined with hard constraints. In the genetic algorithms described, each individual in the population is associated with a pair of chromosomes, representing permutations of tasks and nurses. Those permutations are used as input to a procedure that generates rosters. The fitness of individuals is given by the similarity between the roster generated from the permutations and the current one. The authors developed several versions of the genetic algorithm, whose difference lay in the encoding of permutations and in the genetic operators used for each encoding. These heuristics were tested with real data from a Lisbon hospital and yielded good quality solutions.     

A hybrid setup for a hybrid scenario: combining heuristics for the home health care problem

Home health care, i.e. visiting and nursing patients in their homes, is a growing sector in the medical service business. From a staff rostering point of view, the problem is to find a feasible working plan for all nurses that has to respect a variety of hard and soft constraints, and preferences. Additionally, home health care problems contain a routing component: a nurse must be able to visit her patients in a given roster using a car or public transport. It is desired to design rosters that consider both, the staff rostering and vehicle routing components while minimizing transportation costs and maximizing satisfaction of patients and nurses.     

Chemical reaction optimization with greedy strategy for the 0–1 knapsack problem

The 0–1 knapsack problem (KP01) is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem. It is an NP-hard problem which plays important roles in computing theory and in many real life applications. Chemical reaction optimization (CRO) is a new optimization framework, inspired by the nature of chemical reactions. CRO has demonstrated excellent performance in solving many engineering problems such as the quadratic assignment problem, neural network training, multimodal continuous problems, etc. This paper proposes a new chemical reaction optimization with greedy strategy algorithm (CROG) to solve KP01. The paper also explains the operator design and parameter turning methods for CROG. A new repair function integrating a greedy strategy and random selection is used to repair the infeasible solutions. The experimental results have proven the superior performance of CROG compared to genetic algorithm (GA), ant colony optimization (ACO) and quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QEA).     

A new model for the integrated vehicle-crew-rostering problem and a computational study on rosters

Operational planning within public transit companies has been extensively tackled but still remains a challenging area for operations research models and techniques. This phase of the planning process comprises vehicle-scheduling, crew-scheduling and rostering problems. In this paper, a new integer mathematical formulation to describe the integrated vehicle-crew-rostering problem is presented. The method proposed to obtain feasible solutions for this binary non-linear multi-objective optimization problem is a sequential algorithm considered within a preemptive goal programming framework that gives a higher priority to the integrated vehicle-crew-scheduling goal and a lower priority to the driver rostering goals. A heuristic approach is developed where the decision maker can choose from different vehicle-crew schedules and rosters, while respecting as much as possible management’s interests and drivers’ preferences. An application to real data of a Portuguese bus company shows the influence of vehicle-crew-scheduling optimization on rostering solutions.     

求解敏捷供应链调度优化问题的混合遗传算法

针对敏捷供应链调度决策中,需求的时间、数量约束和供应商生产能力、可用调度时段约束造成系统优化的复杂性,设计结合贪婪算法的混合遗传算法进行求解。算法以供应链系统库存成本和运输成本为适应度函数,以包含企业信息、部件信息和调度时段信息的时段编码作为遗传编码,以线性次序交叉LOX算子和逆序变异INV算子进行交叉和变异操作,在解码过程中结合贪婪算法进行调度决策和适应度计算,保证算法在满足约束条件的基础上快速收敛到系统Pareto最优解,通过算例验证算法的有效性。     

多种群退火贪婪混合遗传算法

遗传算法是应用比较广泛的一种随机优化算法,遗传算法的收敛速度与问题解的质量是影响算法寻优性能的一对主要矛盾。为了提高遗传算法的性能,论文通过将局部搜索能力较强的贪婪算法引入遗传算法,并且同模拟退火和多种群并行遗传进化思想有机结合起来的方法,提出了一个改进型的算法——多种群退火贪婪混合遗传算法(MultigroupAnnealingGreedyHybridGeneticAlgorithm,简称MAGHGA)。仿真结果表明,该算法避免了在遗传算法中存在的早熟收敛问题,增强了算法的全局收敛性,同时也有效地提高了算法的收敛速度。     

Multiple Objective Genetic Algorithms for Path-planning Optimization in Autonomous Mobile Robots

This paper describes the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) for the problem of offline point-to-point autonomous mobile robot path planning. The problem consists of generating “valid” paths or trajectories, for an Holonomic Robot to use to move from a starting position to a destination across a flat map of a terrain, represented by a two-dimensional grid, with obstacles and dangerous ground that the Robot must evade. This means that the GA optimizes possible paths based on two criteria: length and difficulty. First, we decided to use a conventional GA to evaluate its ability to solve this problem (using only one criteria for optimization). Due to the fact that we also wanted to optimize paths under two criteria or objectives, then we extended the conventional GA to implement the ideas of Pareto optimality, making it a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA). We describe useful performance measures and simulation results of the conventional GA and of the MOGA that show that both types of GAs are effective tools for solving the point-to-point path-planning problem.     

Makespan minimization on single batch-processing machine via ant colony optimization

This paper investigates the problem of minimizing makespan on a single batch-processing machine, and the machine can process multiple jobs simultaneously. Each job is characterized by release time, processing time, and job size. We established a mixed integer programming model and proposed a valid lower bound for this problem. By introducing a definition of waste and idle space (WIS), this problem is proven to be equivalent to minimizing the WIS for the schedule. Since the problem is NP-hard, we proposed a heuristic and an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm based on the theorems presented. A candidate list strategy and a new method to construct heuristic information were introduced for the ACO approach to achieve a satisfactory solution in a reasonable computational time. Through extensive computational experiments, appropriate ACO parameter values were chosen and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms was evaluated by solution quality and run time. The results showed that the ACO algorithm combined with the candidate list was more robust and consistently outperformed genetic algorithm (GA), CPLEX, and the other two heuristics, especially for large job instances.     

Unit commitment problem with ramp rate constraint using a binary-real-coded genetic algorithm

The unit commitment problem (UCP) is a nonlinear mixed-integer optimization problem, encountered as one of the toughest problems in power systems. The problem becomes even more complicated when dynamic power limit based ramp rate constraint is taken into account. Due to the inadequacy of deterministic methods in handling large-size instances of the UCP, various metaheuristics are being considered as alternative algorithms to realistic power systems, among which genetic algorithm (GA) has been investigated widely since long back. Such proposals have been made for solving only the integer part of the UCP, along with some other approaches for the real part of the problem. Moreover, the ramp rate constraint is usually discussed only in the formulation part, without addressing how it could be implemented in an algorithm. In this paper, the GA is revisited with an attempt to solve both the integer and real parts of the UCP using a single algorithm, as well as to incorporate the ramp rate constraint in the proposed algorithm also. In the computational experiment carried out with power systems up to 100 units over 24-h time horizon, available in the literature, the performance of the proposed GA is found quite satisfactory in comparison with the previously reported results.     

多目标柔性车间调度的二级精选算法

多目标柔性车间调度问题与实际更加符合,是典型的多目标组合优化问题,运用传统算法求解会产生大量的解空间,找到最优解是非常棘手的问题.基于此,提出了二阶优化方法,即基于遗传算法的初级单目标优化和基于多目标决策体系的高级精选优化的组合优化算法.初级优化阶段,采用改进的遗传算法,选用企业最关心的单目标选出一组Pareto解集;...     

一种改进的混沌优化算法

为了克服遗传算法的早熟现象以及混沌优化的搜索时间过长的缺点,将遗传算法、混沌优化和变尺度方法相结合,提出了一种改进的混沌优化算法.该算法利用混沌的随机性、遍历性和规律性来避免陷入局部极小值,从而也克服了遗传算法中的早熟现象,同时引入了变尺度方法提高该算法的搜索速度.本文还给出了算法的收敛性分析.对典型测试函数的仿真结果表明此算法优于变尺度混沌优化和遗传算法.     

Data Generation for Path Testing

We present two stochastic search algorithms for generating test cases that execute specified paths in a program. The two algorithms are: a simulated annealing algorithm (SA), and a genetic algorithm (GA). These algorithms are based on an optimization formulation of the path testing problem which include both integer- and real-value test cases. We empirically compare the SA and GA algorithms with each other and with a hill-climbing algorithm, Korel's algorithm (KA), for integer-value-input subject programs and compare SA and GA with each other on real-value subject programs. Our empirical work uses several subject programs with a number of paths. The results show that: (a) SA and GA are superior to KA in the number of executed paths, (b) SA tends to perform slightly better than GA in terms of the number of executed paths, and (c) GA is faster than SA; however, KA, when it succeeds in finding the solution, is the fastest.     

基于延迟调度策略的Reduce调度优化算法

在大规模的Hadoop集群中,良好的任务调度策略对提高数据本地性、减小网络传输开销、减少作业执行时间以及提高集群的作业吞吐量都有着重要的影响。本文针对Hadoop架构中Reduce任务的数据本地性较低问题,提出了一种基于延迟调度策略的Reduce任务调度优化算法,通过提高Reduce任务的数据本地性来减少作业执行时间以及提高作业吞吐量,该算法在Hadoop架构的Early Shuffle阶段,使用多级延迟调度策略来提高Reduce任务的数据本地性。最后重写原生公平调度器代码实现了该调度算法,并与原生公平调度器进行了对比实验分析,实验结果表明该算法明显减少了作业执行时间,提高了集群的作业吞吐量。     

基于贪心算法和遗传算法的仓储车辆调度算法

针对仓储车辆调度问题提出一种基于贪心算法与遗传算法的调度算法。它主要利用遗传算法为框架筛选、进化出高效的调度方案,算法又融合了贪心算法对调度中的任务排序进行了快速优化。此融合使得遗传算法的编码简便,排除了不可行解的可能,从而使得算法性能大大提高。算法已经C++语言编程实现,实验分析证明:算法有效地提升了调度方案的效率。     

An optimization method for designing type-2 fuzzy inference systems based on the footprint of uncertainty using genetic algorithms

This paper proposes an optimization method for designing type-2 fuzzy inference systems based on the footprint of uncertainty (FOU) of the membership functions, considering three different cases to reduce the complexity problem of searching the parameter space of solutions. For the optimization method, we propose the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize the type-2 fuzzy inference systems, considering different cases for changing the level of uncertainty of the membership functions to reach the optimal solution at the end.