Journal of Optimization in Industrial Engineering
Volume:12 Issue: 25, Winter and Spring 2019

In this paper, an integrated machine scheduling withits due date setting problem has been considered. It is assumed that the machine is subject to some kind of random unavailability. Due dates should be set in an attractive and reliable manner, implying that they should be short and possible to be met. To this end, first, long due dates are penalized in the objective function. Then, for each customer order, the probability of meeting his/her promised due dateis forced to be at least as large as his/her required service level. To handle this integrated problem, first, the optimal due date formulafor any arbitrary sequence is derived. By using this formula, the mathematical programming formulation of the problem,including a nonlinear non-convex expression, is developed. By defining a piecewise linear under-estimator, the solutions of the resultantmixed integer linear programming formulation have become the lower bounds of the problem. Dynasearch is a very efficient heuristic utilizing the dynamic programming approach to search exponential neighborhoods in the polynomial time. Aniterated dynasearch heuristic is developed for the sequencing part of the problem. Each generated sequence is evaluated by computing its optimal due datesusing the above-mentioned formula. Numerical results confirmed the high quality of the solutions found by this algorithm, as compared with the lower bound

Warranty is a powerful implement for marketing strategy that is used by manufacturersand creates satisfaction for consumers by ensuring to compensate for incorrect operation of the product. Warranty serviceresults ina cost named warranty cost for a manufacturer.This cost is a function of warranty policy, regions, and product failures pattern. Since this service coversthe cost of uncertain failure of the product, it makes some utility for customers. In this paper, we developed a novel customer utility function that is used as a customer objective to be maximized. In addition to the manufacturer objective, minimizing the warranty costisconsidered simultaneously. There are four restrictions on warranty parameters such as time, usage, unit product price and the R&D expenditure to be considered. Finally, we will propose a novel bi-objective model that maximizesthe utility function for customers and minimizesthe warranty cost for the manufacturer. This model will be solved with an evolutionary algorithmcalled Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) and non-dominated Pareto solutionswill be gained from this method.To give a numerical instance, for a certain usage rate’s range of costumers, different warranties are provided and compared. It is believed that the computational results can help manufacturers to determine optimal solutions for the objective functions and consequentlywarranty parameters.

The aim of this paper is to show the application of Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) for efficient and cost-effective manufacturing. Companies need better economic gains from enhanced production, but downtime affects this paradigm. Bair Dar Textile Share Company (BDTSC) is no exception. The looming section of the case company faces on average 38.69% of downtime from the total production time which highly affects its production performance, and thus profitability. The research tries to show the economic gain from the reduced high downtime in the case company by taking the advantages of Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA). As a result FMEA, failure modes, cause, and their effects on the specific section of the company were identified and prioritized using their Risk Priority Numbers (RPN). By taking the FMEA on the looming process machines and focusing on the vital few 20% causes of the identified failure modes, the findings of the research show that the company can decrease the total downtime from its 178 loom machines by 299.04hrs/day. As a result, the company can save downtime that can produce 1,672.82 meters of fabric/cloth and enhance its performance by 4.18%. This downtime reduction in turn results in a daily profit of 38,220.56 ETB (Ethiopian Birr) or 11,466,168.00 ETB annually.

With daily development of information technology supply chain of service-based organizations like financial institutions and the increased value of outsourced activities, also the importance of customer satisfaction, outsourced affairs must have done by the suppliers who have the ability of accomplishing the organizational demands. To mitigate the risk of invalid supplier selections, verification and selection of the suppliers should be performed with an optimized and systematic solution. In order to help the selection of suppliers in the IT department of financial organizations, a different model by using a hybrid QFD-TOPSIS solution in MCDM methods is suggested, in this study. First goal of the provided model is finding the most related criteria and the second one is offering an optimized solution to the supplier selection problem. To begin the QFD part in the mentioned method, two categories of criteria are needed. Then, after the formation of the House of Quality, in a real case study that was performed in a private bank in Iran, the suppliers are ranked by using the proposed method. The greatest efficiencies of this method are not only finding the best supplier by measuring the nearest distance to the ideal and the farthest one to the negative-ideal solution but also closing the opinions of employers to the technical requirements (sub-criteria) of information technology supplier qualifications. Finally, a model reliability part is designed to indicate the validation of the proposed method and a sensitivity analysis is implemented to find the most sensitive sub-criteria. That is the results of ranking alter if sensitive sub-criteria change .

The fixed charge transportation problem (FCTP) is a deployment of the classical transportation problem in which a fixed cost is incurred, independent of the amount transported, along with a variable cost that is proportional to the amount shipped. Since the problem is considered as an NP-hard, the computational time grows exponentially as the size of the problem increases. In this paper, we propose a new heuristic along with well-known metaheuristic like Geneticalgorithm (GA), simulated annealing (SA) and recently developed one, Keshtel algorithm (KA) to solve the FCTP. Contrary to previous works, we develop a simple and strong heuristic according to the nature of the problem and compare the result with metaheuristics. In addition, since the researchers recently used the priority-based representation to encode the transportation graphs and achieved very good results, we consider this representation in metaheuristics and compare the results with the proposed heuristic. Furthermore, we apply the Taguchi experimental design method to set the proper values of algorithms in order to improve their performances. Finally, computational results of heuristic and metaheuristics with different encoding approaches, both in terms of the solution quality and computation time, are studied in different problem sizes.

The classification of fuzzy data is considered as the most challenging areas of data analysis and the complexity of the procedures has been obstacle to the development of new methods for fuzzy data analysis. However, there are significant advances in modeling systems in which fuzzy data are available in the field of mathematical programming. In order to exploit the results of the researches on fuzzy mathematical programming, in this study, a new fuzzy data classification method based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) is provided when fuzzy data are imported as a stream. The proposed method can classify data that changes are created in their behavioral pattern over time using updating the criteria of predicting fuzzy data class. To reduce computational time, fuzzy self-organizing map (SOM) is used to compress incoming data. The new method was tested by simulated data and the results indicated the feasibility of this technique in the face of uncertain and variable conditions.

This paper considers job shop scheduling problem followed by an assembly stage and Lot Streaming (LS). It is supposed here that a number of products have been ordered to be produced. Each product is assembled with a set of several parts. The production system includes two stages. The first stage is a job shop to produce parts. Each machine can process only one part at the same time. The second stage is an assembly shop that contains several parallel machines. Maintenance operations and access restrictions to machines in the first stage are also considered. The objective function is to minimize the completion time of all products (makespan). At first, this problem is described and modelled as a mixed integer linear programming, and GAMS software is applied to solve small-sized problems. Since this problem has been proved to be strongly NP-hard, two new algorithms based on GA and SA are developed to solve the medium- and large-sized problems. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms, a statistical analysis is used along with Relative Percentage Deviation (RPD) factor and well-known criterion. IMP. Various problems are solved by the proposed algorithms. Computational results reveal that both of the two proposed algorithms have good performance. However, the method based on the genetic algorithm performs better than the other proposed algorithm with respect to the objective functi

Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO) has recently gained interest of researchers due to its simplicity in implementation, efficiency and existence of very few parameters. The BBO algorithm is a new type of optimization technique based on biogeography concept. This population-based algorithm uses the idea of the migration strategy of animals or other species for solving optimization problems. the original BBO sometimes has not resulted in desirable outcomes. Migration, mutation and elitism are three Principal operators in BBO. The migration operator plays an important role in sharing information among candidate habitats. This paper proposes a novel migration operator in Original BBO. The proposed BBO is named as PBBO and new migration operator is examined over 12 test problems. Also, results are compared with original BBO and others Meta-heuristic algorithms. Results show that PBBO outperforms over basic BBO and other considered variants of BBO.

In an uncertain and competitive environment, product portfolio management (PPM) becomes more challenging for manufacturers to decide what to make and establish the most beneficial product portfolio. In this paper, a novel approach in PPM is proposed in which the environment uncertainty, competitors’ behavior and customer’s satisfaction are simultaneously considered as the most important criteria in achieving a successful business plan. In terms of uncertainty, the competitors’ product portfolios are assumed as different scenarios with discrete occurrence probabilities. In order to consider various customer preferences, three different market segments are assumed in which the sensitivity of customers towards the products price are considered as high, medium and low and modeled by means of a modified utility functions. The best product portfolio with minimum risk of loss and maximum customer satisfaction is then established by means of a novel regret minimization index. The proposed index aims at finding the best product portfolio which minimizes the total possible loss and regret of the manufacturer, with respect to the other competitors of the market. To better illustrate the practicality of the approach, a numerical example is presented. The results show that the selected products in the suggested portfolio have the highest utility value in all market segments and also they are expected to achieve the highest expected payoff in each possible marketing scenario.

This paper addresses a new mixed integer nonlinear and linear mathematical programming economic lot sizing and scheduling problem in distributed permutation flow shop problem with number of identical factories and machines. Different products must be distributed between the factories and then assignment of products to factories and sequencing of the products assigned to each factory has to be derived. The objective is to minimize the sum of setup costs, work-in-process inventory costs and finished products inventory costs per unit of time. Since the proposed model is NP-hard, an efficient Water Cycle Algorithm is proposed to solve the model. To justify proposed WCA, Monarch Butterfly Optimization (MBO), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and combination of GA and simplex are utilized. In order to determine the best value of algorithms parameters that result in a better solution, a fine-tuning procedure according to Response Surface Methodology is executed.

In this paper, the problem of population districting in the health system of South Khorasan province has been investigated in the form of an optimization problem. Now that the districting problem is considered as a strategic matter, it is vital to obtain efficient solutions in order to implement in the system. Therefore in this study two meta-heuristic algorithms, Ant Lion Optimizer (ALO) and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), have been applied to solve the problem in the dimensions of the real world. The objective function of the problem is to maximize the population balance in each district. Problem constraints include unique assignment as well as non-existent allocation of abnormalities. Abnormal allocation means compactness, lack of contiguous, and absence of holes in the districts. According to the obtained results, GWO has a higher level of performance than the ALO. The results of this problem can be applied as a useful scientific tool for districting in other organizations and fields of application.

The main objective of this research is to improvethe design and performance of the polyurethane foam-filled thin-walled aluminum grooved circular tubes using multi-response optimization (MRO) technique. The tubes are shaped with the inner and the outer circular grooves at different positions along the axis. For this aim, several numerical simulations using ABAQUS finite element explicit code are performed to study the energy absorption of these structures. The effects of the grooves distance, tube diameter, grooves depth, foam density, and tube thickness are investigated onthecrashworthiness parameters of grooved circular tubes. Finite-element analysis is performed along the lines defined by design of experiments (DOE) technique at different combinations of the design parameters. The MRO is carried out using the mathematical models obtained from response surface methodology (RSM) for two crashworthiness parameters termed as the specific energy absorption (SEA) and the crushing force efficiency (CFE). Finally, by analyzing all the design criteria including theabsorbed energy of tube, themass of tube, the mean crushing load, and the maximum crushing load, the optimal density of polyurethane foam and geometric parameters were obtained through both multi-objective optimization process and Pareto diagram. A comparison of the obtained results indicates the significance of grooves distance and the inner diameter of thetube as the most influential parameters.

This paper presents a new model of two-echelon periodic supply vessel planning problem with time windows mix of facility location (PSVPTWMFL-2E) in an offshore oil and gas industry. The new mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) modelconsists ofa fleet composition problem and a location-routing problem (LRP). The aim of the model is to determine the size and type of large vessels in the first echelon and supply vessels in the second echelon.Additionally,the location of warehouse(s),optimal voyages and related schedules in both echelons are purposed.The total cost should be kept at a minimum and the need of operation regions and offshore installationsshould be fulfilled.A two-stage exact solution method, which is common for maritime transportation problems, is presented for small and medium-sized problems. In the first stage, all voyages are generated and in the second stage, optimal fleet composition, voyages and schedules are determined. Furthermore, optimal onshore base(s) to install central warehouse(s)and optimal operation region(s) to send offshore installation’s needs are decided in the second stage.

One of the most important decision making problems in many production systems is identification and determination of products and their quantities according to available resources. This problem is called product-mix. However, in the real-world situations, for existing constrained resources, many companies try to provide some products from external resources to achieve more profits. In this paper, an integrated product-mix-outsourcing problem (IPMO) is considered to answer how many products should be produced inside of the system or purchased from external resources. For this purpose, an algorithm based on Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Branch and Bound (B&B) algorithm is proposed. For investigation of the proposed algorithm, a numerical example is presented. The obtained results show the optimal result by the new algorithm is as same as the results of integer linear programming.

During the last decade, reverse logistics networks received a considerable attention due to economic importance and environmental regulations and customer awareness. Integration of leading and reverse logistics networks during logistical network design is one of the most important factors in supply chain. In this research, an Integer Linear Programming model is presented to design a multi-layer reverse-leading, multi-product, and multi-period integrated logistics network by considering multi-capacity level for facilities under uncertainty condition. This model included three maximizing profit, minimizing delay of goods delivering to customer, and minimizing returned raw material from suppliers. This research gives financial incentives to encourage customers in order to return their used product. Considering that the remaining value of used products is the main incentive of a company to buy second-handed goods, a dynamic pricing approach is determined to define purchase price for these types of products, and based on that, the percentage of returned products were collected by customers. In addition, in this study, parameters have uncertainty features and are vague; therefore, at first, they are converted into exact parameters and, then, because model is multi-objective, the fuzzy mathematical programming approach is used to convert multi-objective model into a single objective; finally, the model by version 8 of Lingo is run. In order to solve a large-sized model, a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) was applied. Computational results indicate the effect of the proposed purchase price on encourage customers to return the used products.