This book is concerned with the application of Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) in the domain of management. EA are powerful and broadly applicable search and optimisation techniques based on principles from evolution theory, with Genetic Algorithms being the most well-known class. The first part of...

In this paper an improved set of benchmark instances for the simple assembly line balancing problem is presented. The benchmark set currently available consists of instances with 7 to 297 tasks to be executed. Although claims made in the literature state that instances with up to 1000 tasks can...

In this paper a methodology designed for knowledge acquisition through literature is presented. It mainly fits strategic business problems, but is also applicable in domains with similar characteristics. In contrast to other methodologies that use documents in textual forms, this approach tries...

In the past decades the involvement of local experts in the planning and evaluation of development programs has steadily increased. Ownership of development planning is propagated as major aim of bilateral and international development co-operation. Yet, the quality and performance of many local...

In modern portfolio theory like that of Markowitz or Sharpe the investor follows amean/variance-rationality. Even the founders of this theory observed unsatisfactory resultsbecause of symmetrical risk measures like variance or standard deviation. Post-modern theorythen considers downside risk...

This paper deals with the problem how toestimate multicriteria utility functions of ordinalattributes under incomplete information. We investigatea probabilistic representation of a preference system. Bythis it is possible to communicate information about adecisionmaker’s preferences in the...

Probability distributions on a set of discrete variablesare a suitable means to represent knowledge about theirrespective mutual dependencies. When now thingsbecome evident such a distribution can be adapted tothe new situation and hence submitted to a soundinference process. Knowledge...