This article presents a new heuristic for generalized assignment problems with a very large number of jobs. The heuristic applies a probabilistic acceptance of a move, based on a percentile threshold, using information from recent moves. This percentile search heuristic (PSH) is compared to tabu...

The term “value chain” describes the collection of activities that are performed to design, produce, market, deliver and support a product. The Australian sugar industry value chain has a number of distinct stages involved in the transformation of the cane crop into raw and refined sugar and...

The supply chain of the conventional Australian sugar industry is characterized by horizontal separation between the stages. Often antagonistic relations between segments, particularly farmers and millers, led to each developing their systems for their own segment’s benefit, without...

A rapid increase in demand and severe droughts in recent years has increased the pressure on water supplies throughout most parts of Australia. This has resulted in the need for tools to allocate limited water across users in different regions, and explore scenarios so as to achieve economic,...

Current residential price tariff structures in Australia, which are predominately based on a flat daily supply charge combined with a per kWh electricity charge, create a distortion to the electricity consumption pattern, leading to larger afternoon and evening peak demands across the networks....

As government and industry plan to reduce energy consumption in building stock, there is a need to forecast the uptake of retrofit packages across building stock over time. To address this challenge a diffusion model was set up and applied to office building stock across New South Wales (NSW) in...