Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research

This paper is a contribution to the research which aims to provide an efficient optimization algorithm for job-shop scheduling problems with multi-purpose machines or MPMJSP. To meet its objective, this paper proposes a new variant of particle swarm optimization algorithm, called GLN-PSO_c, which is an extension of the standard particle swarm optimization algorithm that uses multiple social learning topologies in its evolutionary process. GLN-PSO_c is a metaheuristic that can be applied to many types of optimization problems, where MPMJSP is one of these types. To apply GLN-PSO_c in MPMJSP, a procedure to map the position of particle into the solution of MPMJSP is proposed. Throughout this paper, GLN-PSO_c combined with this procedure is named MPMJSP-PSO. The performance of MPMJSP-PSO is evaluated on well-known benchmark instances, and the numerical results show that MPMJSP-PSO performs well in terms of solution quality and that new best known solutions were found in some instances of the test problems.

In this paper, the Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands (VRPSD) is considered where customer demands are normally distributed. We propose a new model for computing the expected length of a tour. Monte Carlo simulation is used to demonstrate the accuracy of the model on randomly generated test problems. It is assumed that the service policy is non-divisible, meaning that the entire demand at each customer must be served in a single visit by a unique vehicle.

The implicit Lagrangian was first proposed by Mangasarian and Solodov as a smooth merit function for the nonnegative orthant complementarity problem. It has attracted much attention in the past ten years because of its utility in reformulating complementarity problems as unconstrained minimization problems. In this paper, exploiting the Jordan-algebraic structure, we extend it to the vector-valued implicit Lagrangian for symmetric cone complementary problem (SCCP), and show that it is a continuously differentiable complementarity function for SCCP and whose Jacobian is strongly semismooth. As an application, we develop the real-valued implicit Lagrangian and the corresponding smooth merit function for SCCP, and give a necessary and sufficient condition for the stationary point of the merit function to be a solution of SCCP. Finally, we show that this merit function can provide a global error bound for SCCP with the uniform Cartesian P-property.

Recently, using the framework of self-regularity, Salahi in his Ph.D. thesis proposed an adaptive single step algorithm which takes advantage of the current iterate information to find an appropriate barrier parameter rather than using a fixed fraction of the current duality gap. However, his algorithm might do at most one bad step after each good step in order to keep the iterate in a certain neighborhood of the central path. In this paper, using the same framework, we propose a hybrid adaptive algorithm. Depending on the position of the current iterate, our new algorithm uses either the classical Newton search direction or a self-regular search direction. The larger the distance from the central path, the larger the barrier degree of the self-regular search direction is. Unlike the classical approach, here we control the iterates by guaranteeing certain reduction of the proximity measure. This itself leads to a one dimensional equation which determines the target barrier parameter at each iteration. This allows us to have a large update algorithm without any need for safeguard or special steps. Finally, we prove that our hybrid adaptive algorithm has an worst case iteration complexity.

The multi-criteria facilities layout problem can be formulated as a quadratic assignment model that can handle multiple qualitative and quantitative factors in the objective function. Some studies have shown that the techniques and tools of facilities layout problems can equally be applied for the layout design of user interface components in human-computer interface. This paper presents an alternate approach, which handles multiple qualitative and quantitative factors in a different manner separately in the objective function to obtain the initial layouts. The proposed approach also consists of a layout procedure, in which the pair of facilities with the least composite criterion value has been selected to be placed far apart in the layout to generate an initial layout in the construction procedure. The results of the proposed approach are compared with that of an existing approach which handles a number of qualitative and quantitative factors in the same manner as in the objective function to obtain the initial layouts for the example task of the user interface components layout problem under consideration.

A fuzzy two person interval game problem is proposed and treated in this paper which is not easily tackled by the conventional methods. First, with respect to this pay-off values, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a saddle point is proved. Based on interval value model, we are to find the value of interval game without saddle point. Finally, example is given to illustrate the procedure and to indicate the performance of the proposed method.

Consider a batch-sizing problem, where all jobs are identical or similar, and a unit processing time (p = 1) is specified for each job. To minimize the total completion time of jobs, partitioning jobs into batches may be necessary. Learning effect from setup repetition makes small-sized batches; on the contrary, job's learning effect results in large-sized batches. With their collaborative influence, we develop a forward dynamic programming (DP) algorithm to determine the optimal number of batches and their optimal integer sizes. The computation effort required by this DP algorithm is a polynomial function of job size.