Efficient management of waste generated in healthcare systems is crucial to minimize its environmental impact and ensure public health. Sustainable medical waste management (MWM) systems require careful network design, which can be achieved through optimization techniques. This work extends one...

The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) is one of the most important combinatorial optimization problems in theory and practice. In this paper, we are proposing a hierarchical data-driven parallel memetic algorithm to solve the problem. A component-based hierarchical system architecture with a...

Worker assignment problems are encountered in many production systems and are known to greatly influence system performances. We focus on dynamic problems where the system is characterized by unexpected and fluctuated demands and random times. Workers are multiskilled and must be assigned to...

In this paper, we address the capacitated product portfolio mix-and-allocation problem (CPPMA), which arises where a decision maker has to determine simultaneously (a) the optimal product mix; (b) its allocation to different production facilities; and (c) the capacities of the facilities given...

PurposeThis study aims to develop a heuristic for an outpatient appointment system considering patient classification.Design/methodology/approachThe heuristic proposed was applied in simulations with 18 scenarios, combining different environmental factors. Total cost was adopted as a performance...

Harmony search algorithm (HS) cannot always avoid being trapped in local optima, and several local search algorithms have recently been used to overcome this limitation by searching the neighborhood of some solution for improved ones. However, how local search affects the performance of HS has...

This work proposes a variation of the location-routing problem (LRP), a problem that interconnects two well-known N P-hard optimisation problems: the vehicle routing problem (VRP) and facility location problem (FLP). There are many mathematical formulations and solution methods for a number of...

In this work, we consider a scheduling problem faced by a company involved in the production of off-road vehicles using a three-level assembly process, subject to precedence, machines, and resource constraints. This problem has multiple characteristics shared with other scheduling problems,...

Online 2D irregular bin packing problem (2D-OIBPP) with uncertain demands is a critical challenge in the manufacturing and assembly industry, where a robot is required to place incoming objects within a limited time to maximize overall packing density. The high demands on real-time and...

The flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is a typical mixed-integer linear programming problem, which plays an important role in operation research. A variable neighborhood search (VNS) enhance genetic algorithm (VNSeGA) is presented to minimize makespan of FJSP in this paper. In VNSeGA,...