On the relationship between mergers and economic activity: Evidence from an optimised hybrid method

A new approach is developed to examine potential causality between merger activity and industrial production. The proposed method combines an information criterion-based approach to lag optimisation with joint maximum likelihood estimation of an autoregressive distributed lag model and GARCH(1,1) specification. Application to UK data provides significant evidence in support of causality between merger activity and industrial production, a result which has been predicted theoretically in the literature but has not received empirical support in earlier research.     

Simulated annealing and genetic algorithms for minimizing mean flow time in an open shop

This paper considers the problem of scheduling n jobs on m machines in an open shop environment so that the sum of completion times or mean flow time becomes minimal. It continues recent work by Bräsel et al. [H. Bräsel, A. Herms, M. Mörig, T. Tautenhahn, T. Tusch, F. Werner, Heuristic constructive algorithms for open shop scheduling to minmize mean flow time, European J. Oper. Res., in press (doi.10.1016/j.ejor.2007.02.057)] on constructive algorithms. For this strongly NP-hard problem, we present two iterative algorithms, namely a simulated annealing and a genetic algorithm. For the simulated annealing algorithm, several neighborhoods are suggested and tested together with the control parameters of the algorithm. For the genetic algorithm, new genetic operators are suggested based on the representation of a solution by the rank matrix describing the job and machine orders. Extensive computational results are presented for problems with up to 50 jobs and 50 machines, respectively. The algorithms are compared relative to each other, and the quality of the results is also estimated partially by a lower bound for the corresponding preemptive open shop problem. For most of the problems, the genetic algorithm is superior when fixing the same number of 30 000 generated solutions for each algorithm. However, in contrast to makespan minimization problems, where the focus is on problems with an equal number of jobs and machines, it turns out that problems with a larger number of jobs than machines are the hardest problems.     

George Dantzig in the development of economic analysis

The role of optimization is central to economic analysis, particularly in its “neoclassical” phase, since about 1870, and is therefore highly compatible with the impulse behind linear programming (LP), as developed by Dantzig. LP’s stress on alternative activities fits very well with modern economic analysis. The concept of economic equilibrium, properly understood, required the central notion of complementary slackness. so central in LP.

LP was seen as a tool for actual implementation of neoclassical principles precisely at a time when the market was under attack from several directions. The economists Koopmans and Hurwicz played an important role both in stimulating the crucial development of the simplex method and in relating LP to the world of economics.

LP became widely used in national economic planning, particularly for developing countries, and for the study of individual industries, especially the energy sector. The works of Chenery and of Manne are central in these fields.

As respect for the usefulness of the market increased, the emphasis on national planning diminished and was replaced by an emphasis on equilibrium analysis, in which LP still plays a large part in the study of individual sectors, particularly energy.     

Integrated scheduling of handling equipment at automated container terminals

To improve the productivities of an automated container terminal, it is important to schedule different types of handling equipment in an integrated way. A mixed-integer programming model, which considers various constraints related to the integrated operations between different types of handling equipment, is formulated. A heuristic algorithm, called multi-layer genetic algorithm (MLGA) is developed with a view to overcome the computation difficulty for solving the mathematical model. A numerical experimentation is carried out in order to evaluate the performance of the algorithm.     

Competence-driven project portfolio selection,scheduling and staff assignment

This paper presents a new model for project portfolio selection, paying specific attention to competence development. The model seeks to maximize a weighted average of economic gains from projects and strategic gains from the increment of desirable competencies. As a sub-problem, scheduling and staff assignment for a candidate set of selected projects must also be optimized. We provide a nonlinear mixed-integer program formulation for the overall problem, and then propose heuristic solution techniques composed of (1) a greedy heuristic for the scheduling and staff assignment part, and (2) two (alternative) metaheuristics for the project selection part. The paper outlines experimental results on a real-world application provided by the E-Commerce Competence Center Austria and, for a slightly simplified instance, presents comparisons with the exact solution computed by CPLEX.     

Valid inequalities for the single-item capacitated lot sizing problem with step-wise costs

This paper presents a new class of valid inequalities for the single-item capacitated lot sizing problem with step-wise production costs (LS-SW). Constant sized batch production is carried out with a limited production capacity in order to satisfy the customer demand over a finite horizon. A new class of valid inequalities we call mixed flow cover, is derived from the existing integer flow cover inequalities by a lifting procedure. The lifting coefficients are sequence independent when the batch sizes (V) and the production capacities (P) are constant and when V divides P. When the restriction of the divisibility is removed, the lifting coefficients are shown to be sequence independent. We identify some cases where the mixed flow cover inequalities are facet defining. We propose a cutting plane algorithm for different classes of valid inequalities introduced in the paper. The exact separation algorithm proposed for the constant capacitated case runs in polynomial time. Computational results show the efficiency of the new class mixed flow cover compared to the existing methods.     

Comparison and hybridization of crossover operators for the nurse scheduling problem

In this paper, we present a hybrid genetic algorithm for the well-known nurse scheduling problem (NSP). The NSP involves the construction of roster schedules for nursing staff in order to maximize the quality of the roster schedule subject to various hard constraints. In the literature, several genetic algorithms have been proposed to solve the NSP under various assumptions. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we extensively compare the various crossover operators and test them on a standard dataset in a solitary approach. Second, we propose several options to hybridize the various crossover operators.     

Proactive heuristic procedures for robust project scheduling: An experimental analysis

Solution-robust project scheduling is a growing research field aiming at constructing proactive schedules to cope with multiple disruptions during project execution. When stochastic activity durations are considered, including time buffers between activities is a proven method to improve the stability of a baseline schedule.     

Single machine scheduling with family setups to minimize total earliness and tardiness

This paper considers the problem of scheduling a given number of jobs on a single machine to minimize total earliness and tardiness when family setup times exist. The paper proposes optimal branch-and-bound algorithms for both the group technology assumption and if the group technology assumption is removed. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to solve larger problems with the group technology assumption removed. The proposed algorithms were empirically evaluated on problems of various sizes and parameters. The paper also explores how the choice of procedure affects total earliness and tardiness if an implementation of lean production methods has resulted in a reduction in setup times. An important finding of these empirical investigations is that scheduling jobs by removing the group technology assumption can significantly reduce total earliness and tardiness.