The Steiner Travelling Salesman Problem (STSP) is a variant of the TSP that is suitable for instances defined on road networks. We consider an extension of the STSP in which the road traversal costs are both stochastic and correlated. This happens, for example, when vehicles are prone to delays...

The travelling salesman problem (TSP) is one of the most prominent NP-hard combinatorial optimisation problems. After over fifty years of intense study, the TSP continues to be of broad theoretical and practical interest. Using a novel approach to empirical scaling analysis, which in principle...

Finding good parameter values for meta-heuristics is known as the parameter setting problem. A new parameter tuning strategy, called IPTS, is proposed that is a novel instance-specific method to take the trade-off between solution quality and computational time into consideration. Two important...

Vehicle routing variants with multiple depots and mixed fleet present intricate combinatorial aspects related to sequencing choices, vehicle type choices, depot choices, and depots positioning. This paper introduces a dynamic programming methodology for efficiently evaluating compound...

We develop a flexible discrete-time hedging methodology that minimizes the expected value of any desired penalty function of the hedging error within a general regime-switching framework. A numerical algorithm based on backward recursion allows for the sequential construction of an optimal...

Managerial flexibility can have a significant impact on the value of new product development projects. We investigate how the market environment in which a firm operates influences the value and use of development flexibility. We characterize the market environment according to two dimensions,...

We consider the economic lot-sizing problem with perishable items (ELS-PI), where each item has a deterministic expiration date. Although all items in stock are equivalent regardless of procurement or expiration date, we allow for an allocation mechanism that defines an order in which the items...

As bunker fuel cost constitutes a major portion of the shipping liners’ operating cost, it is imperative for them to minimize the bunkering cost to remain competitive. Service contract with a fuel supplier is a strategy they venture on to reduce this cost. Typically, liner operators enter into...

This paper presents a model and solution methodology for scheduling patients in a multi-class, multi-resource surgical system. Specifically, given a master schedule that provides a cyclic breakdown of total OR availability into specific daily allocations to each surgical specialty, the model...

This paper extends the results of a particular capacitated vehicle routing problem with pickups and deliveries (see Pandelis et al., 2013b) to the case in which the demands for a material that is delivered to N customers and the demands for a material that is collected from the customers are...