A Heuristic Scheduling Algorithm

This paper describes a heuristic algorithm developed to schedule a group of individuals such that every person performs each of the different activities they desire at some point during the time-frame of the schedule and the difference between the exogenously given number of people desired at each available location-activity-period position and those allocated to these positions is minimized. The contribution of the present work is in the formulation of the problem, and the resulting ease with which good solutions to large-scale problems can be generated, rather than in the mechanics of the algorithm itself. The mathematic formulation of the scheduling problem is presented first, and subsequently, the solution strategy is elaborated. Experimental results on some reasonably large problems are also presented.     

A Dual Heuristic for Vehicle Scheduling

A heuristic method is used to solve the vehicle scheduling problem by maintaining local optimality whilst approaching the feasible region. Tests with published problems show that the technique gives results comparable with the best published algorithms. The practical requirements of real life scheduling are discussed, and the flexibility of the technique is demonstrated for a complex problem involving weekly cyclical deliveries.     

Heuristic Techniques for Single Line Train Scheduling

Optimising a train schedule on a single line track is known to be NP-Hard with respect to the number of conflicts in the schedule. This makes it difficult to determine optimum solutions to real life problems in reasonable time and raises the need for good heuristic techniques. The heuristics applied and compared in this paper are a local search heuristic with an improved neighbourhood structure, genetic algorithms, tabu search and two hybrid algorithms. When no time constraints are enforced on solution time, the genetic and hybrid algorithms were within five percent of the optimal solution for at least ninety percent of the test problems.     

同顺序流水作业排序问题的一个启发式算法

本文主要给出了同顺序m×n排序问题初始序的选取方法以及通过计算可避免出现高重循环的初始序的排序算法,然后又给出了利用矩阵可行线性质将初始序调试成较优序的可行方法.利用该文方法对n=15,m=3～14的144个例题计算,得出平均相对误差为3.145%的结果,对于m=3与m=4的128个例题计算,得出平均相对误差为0.6306%.统计结果表明该方法可在实际中进行应用.     

Heuristic Scheduling of Ship Replenishment at Sea

This paper describes the structure of a heuristic algorithm, or rule-base, which schedules naval replenishment. The work provided a scheduling module for a model simulating the replenishment of a moving task-group of warships. The rules were derived from a knowledge-acquisition exercise with replenishment experts, and included experience from experimentation. This paper is intended to stimulate discussion with others investigating decision-support systems for vehicle-scheduling under complex constraints.     

需要安装时间的平行多功能机排序问题的启发式算法

考虑需要安装时间的平行多功能机排序问题。在该模型中,每个工件对应机器集合的一个子集,其只能在这个子集中的任一台机器上加工,称这个子集为该工件的加工集合;工件分组,同组工件具有相同的加工时间和加工集合,不同组中的工件在同一台机器上连续加工需要安装时间,目标函数为极小化最大完工时间。对该问题NP-难的一般情况设计启发式算法:首先按照特定的规则将所有工件组都整组地安排到各台机器上,然后通过在各机器间转移工件不断改进当前最大完工时间。通过与下界的比较检验算法的性能,大量的计算实验表明,算法是实用而有效的。     

A No-Wait Flowshop Scheduling Heuristic to Minimize Makespan

The scheduling problem in the no-wait or constrained flowshop, with the makespan objective, is considered in this article. A simple heuristic algorithm is proposed on the basis of heuristic preference relations and job insertion. When evaluated over a large number of problems of various sizes, the solutions given by the proposed heuristic are found to be fairly accurate and much superior to those given by the two existing heuristics.     

Effective Heuristic Procedures for a Field Technician Scheduling Problem

This paper addresses a field technician scheduling problem faced by many service providers in telecommunication industry. The problem is to assign a set of jobs, at different locations with time windows, to a group of field technicians with different job skills. Such a problem can be viewed as a generalization of the well-known vehicle routing problem with time windows since technician skills need to be matched with job types. We designed and tested several heuristic procedures for solving the problem, namely a greedy heuristic, a local search algorithm, and a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP). Our computational results indicate that GRASP is the most effective among them but requires more CPU time. However, the unique structure of GRASP allows us to exploit parallelism to achieve linear speed-up with respect to the number of machines used.     

A Heuristic Decomposition Algorithm for Scheduling Problems on Mixed Graphs

We consider a scheduling problem where a set of n jobs has to be processed on a set of m machines and arbitrary precedence constraints between operations are given. Moreover, for any two operations i and j values a _ij >0 and a _ji >0 may be given where a _ij is the minimal difference between the starting times of operations i and j when operation i is processed first. Often, the objective is to minimize the makespan but we consider also arbitrary regular criteria. Even the special cases of the classical job shop problem J//C_max belong to the set of NP-hard problems. Therefore, approximation or heuristic algorithms are necessary to handle large-dimension problems. Based on the mixed graph model we give a heuristic decomposition algorithm for such a problem, i.e. the initial problem is partitioned into subproblems that can be solved exactly or approximately with a small error bound. These subproblems are obtained by a relaxation of a subset of the set of undirected edges of the mixed graph. The subproblems are successively solved and a proportion of the results obtained for one subproblem is kept for further subproblem definitions. Numerical results of the algorithm presented here are given.     

项目鲁棒调度的资源分配启发式算法研究

合理的资源配置是提高项目调度鲁棒性一种有效的方法。本文针对项目鲁棒调度问题,提出了Max-PRUA资源分配启发式算法,以期通过生成鲁棒性高的资源分配方案来提高调度计划的鲁棒性。本算法设计了最大化利用优先关系和不可避免弧传递资源的资源分配两项策略来传递最大资源量,以减少由额外约束传递的资源量,降低对项目调度鲁棒性的影响。为寻优最优资源分配方案,配合局部搜索算法,本算法构建了动态活动组GRA,通过对组内活动顺序重排以生成多种资源分配方案,以利于从解空间中寻优出最佳的鲁棒性方案。最后通过大量的仿真实验验证和与其它算法进行比较,结果表明本算法对于不同规模和不同因素影响的项目均有较好的适应性,生成的资源分配方案对调度计划鲁棒性影响较小,是一种有效的算法。     

带单服务器的自由作业排序问题的启发式算法

研究带单服务器的自由作业排序问题,证明在只有两台机器且加工时间相同的情况下该问题是强NP-困难的,引入了求解该问题的启发式算法,证明该算法的紧界为5/4.在具有m台机器的情况下,给出相应的启发式算法,其紧界为2-3/(m+2).     

A Two Stage Search Heuristic for Scheduling Payments in Projects

When the Net Present Value (NPV) of a project is used as a measure of its financial performance, effective management of cash flows over the duration of the project is critical for improved profitability. Progress payments are a major component of project cash flows. In many project environments, the contractor can negotiate payment terms. Payments are typically tied to completion of project activities and therefore have significant impact on the schedule of activities and the timing of the payments. In this paper, we consider the problem of simultaneously determining the amount, timing and location of progress payments in projects to maximize NPV. Due to the combinatorial nature of the problem, heuristics are a practical approach to solving the problem. We propose a two-stage heuristic where simulated annealing is used in the first stage to determine a set of payments. In the second stage, activities are rescheduled to improve project NPV. We compare the performance of this general purpose heuristic with other problem-dependent heuristics from the literature. Our results indicate that the simulated annealing heuristic significantly outperforms the parameter-based heuristics. Although rescheduling in the second stage improves NPV, increases are relatively small in magnitude. While the specific parameters settings suggested by the simulated annealing heuristic in this study may have limited generalizability at this time due to the narrow range of problems tested, our analysis suggests that a pure simulated annealing approach is a very attractive alternative for obtaining good heuristic solutions to the complex problem of scheduling payments in projects.     

Expert Systems for Vehicle Scheduling

Vehicle scheduling is one of the most commonly occurring problems of transport management. Traditionally, human schedulers tackle these problems, but over the past 30 years a considerable effort has been put into developing computer systems to replace or assist them. Despite this effort, very few organizations routinely use computerized vehicle scheduling. There are several reasons for this, including the difficulty in dealing with real complexity and uncertainty in algorithmic solutions. In recent years, interactive systems have tried to overcome these difficulties by using humans to play a part in the scheduling. A next step would be to include the schedulers' skills in an expert system. Unfortunately, there is considerable diversity in scheduling problems and little agreement about the facts or rules needed for a knowledge base. At present, some characteristics of a general expert system for vehicle scheduling can be suggested, but several practical difficulties must still be overcome.     

Application of a Heuristic Scheduling Rule for a Tyre Testing Department

This paper presents the development and application of a heuristic scheduling rule for the Testing Department of a tyre and rubber company. The company had set down five major objectives for this department: (1) minimize average flow-time; (2) maintain an average flow-time of less than two weeks; (3) maintain pre-set maximum individual test flow times; (4) assign a higher priority to important jobs; (5) maintain a balanced mix between truck and passenger tyres. A composite scheduling rule was designed to meet these objectives which contains the following four components: (a) slack-time per remaining operation; (b) shortest processing time; (c) an urgency factor to prioritize important jobs; (d) a balancing factor to enable a desired proportion between truck and passenger tyres. This composite rule is tested against the existing scheduling scheme used by the foreman and against the simple S.P.T. rule. The results are very encouraging.     

资源约束项目调度中重心启发式方法研究

本文目的在于研究一种新的资源约束项目的启发式方法。研究中通过两个平行工序转化为顺序工序的优化问题，提出了工序的重心的概念，并将其引入到资源约束项目调度问题的启发式方法中，提出了一个新的启发式方法——基于重心的启发式方法。在此基础上，本文还对该启发式方法的进行了评价。首先将该方法程序化；然后选取PSPLIB中的问题实例进行计算；最后，在分析计算结果的基础上，对该方法的求解效果和执行效率进行评价。评价结果说明这种新方法求解效果符合实际需要并且计算效率很高。     

Heuristic Performance and Network/Resource Characteristics in Resource-constrained Project Scheduling

The problem considered in this study is that of non-pre-emptive scheduling of the activities in a project network to minimize project duration under limited resource availabilities. Various heuristic rules and optimization techniques have been applied to this problem, and comparisons of their effectiveness have been made in the literature. However, no thorough investigation of the types of network and resource characteristics which play an underlying role in determining heuristic performance and which account for the variability of results has been made previously. In this study, a new heuristic rule which compares favourably with the widely-used heuristic rules is developed, and the influence of network/resource characteristics on the performance of different heuristic rules is investigated.     

A Worst-case Performance of the Shortest-processing-time Heuristic for Single Machine Scheduling

This paper analyses a worst-case performance of the shortest-processing-time (SPT) heuristic in minimizing a quadratic function of job lateness for single machine scheduling. A sufficient condition on processing-plus-wait due dates is found for the SPT sequence to be optimal. A worst-case lower bound to the optimal solution is derived from the SPT sequence. It is then shown that the SPT sequence is asymptotically optimal. Extensive computational experiments suggest that the SPT heuristic may be a good choice for just-in-time production.     

求解排课表问题的一个启发式数值算法

为了便于建立与排课表问题有关的决策支持系统,本文给出一个求解排课表问题的启发式数值算法,证明了算法的正确性,并举例说明算法的应用.该算法具有易于编程实现、收敛性好等优点,大量数值实值表明该算法能求得问题的最优解.     

A New Heuristic Method for the Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling Problem

A new heuristic method for the permutation flow shop scheduling problem is presented and compared with two other heuristics named NEH and SPIRIT. The new heuristic method is based on a property of the scheduling problem that provides an upper bound on the idle time of the last machine between any two adjacent jobs regardless of their position in the sequence of jobs. The results from computational experience have shown that the new heuristic outperforms, in solution quality, all others for problems having up to 50 jobs and 30 machines.