Statistical experimental design and analysis is a cornerstone for scientific inquiry that is rarely applied in reporting computational testing. This approach is employed to study the relative performance characteristics of the four leading algorithmic and heuristic alternatives to solve the...

In this paper search heuristics are developed for generic sequencing problems with emphasis on job shop scheduling. The proposed methods integrate problem specific heuristics common to Operations Research and local search approaches from Artificial Intelligence in order to obtain desirable...

The relentless pursuit of increased product quality via continuous improvement is an important long-term strategy for achieving competitive advantage. However, manufacturers must still achieve high product quality in the short run. Hence, short-run quality improvement strategies are necessary,...

Custom packs group medical disposable items into a single sterile package that is used for surgical procedures. Although custom packs constitute a well-known concept in the hospital setting, little is known on methodologies to configure them, especially if the number of medical items, procedures...

In manufacturing, control of ergonomic risks at manual workplaces is a necessity commanded by legislation, care for health of workers and economic considerations. Methods for estimating ergonomic risks of workplaces are integrated into production routines at most firms that use the assembly-type...

Optimum reservoir operation is a challenging problem in water resources systems. In this paper, Intelligent Water Drops (IWD) algorithm is applied in a reservoir operation problem. IWD is a population based algorithm and is initially proposed for solving combinatorial problems. The algorithm...

We present ongoing work on the construction of a spatial microsimulation model to assess the influence of demographics on residential heat consumption for Hamburg, Germany. Demographics are important for urban energy planning as: (1) Buildings are becoming more energy-efficient and building...

In this note, we prove ??-completeness of the following problem: Given a set of trams of different types, which are stacked on sidings in their depot and an order in which trams of specified types are supposed to leave. Is there an assignment of trams to departure times without any shunting...

The floorplanning (or facility layout) problem consists in finding the optimal positions for a given set of modules of fixed area (but perhaps varying height and width) within a facility such that the distances between pairs of modules that have a positive connection cost are minimized. This is...