Long-term throughput, as a key performance indicator of a stochastic flow line, is affected by numerous parameters describing the features of the flow line, such as processing time and buffer size. Fast and accurate evaluation methods for a given set of values for those parameters are a...

We have developed a non-linear multi-objective model for optimal design of railway timetables. The objectives of the model are to maximize schedule reliability and minimize energy consumption, rolling stock and crew deployment. Metrics have been derived for each of these objectives. AHP is used...

The multi-commodity network flow problem (MCNF) consists in routing a set of commodities through a capacitated network at minimum cost and is relevant for routing containers in liner shipping networks. As commodity transit times are often a critical factor, the literature has introduced hard...

This article provides a general meeting scheduling model to schedule en-masse interviews over multi-day events. Creating such meeting schedules is a complicated, time-consuming task that usually requires considerable manual planning when hundreds of meetings are involved and if the quality of...

This paper reports on the use of a dynamic programming model to sequence the loading of storage facilities at an apple-packing plant operating in the state of New York, USA. The post-harvest quality of perishable agricultural prdoucts is significantly affected by delays in getting the product...

In this paper, we treat an optimal control problem of a stochastic two-machine flowshop with machines subject to random breakdown and repair. While the problem is difficult to solve, it can be approximated by a deterministic problem when the rates of machine failure and repair become large....

We establish the computational complexity of the problem of minimizing makespan in a flowshop, where each jobs requires a pallet the entire time, from the start of its first operation until the completion of the last operation. We prove that the problem is NP-hard in the strong sense for m =2...

This paper calls for a change in paradigm in lot sizing and scheduling. Traditionally, a discrete time scale is chosen to model lot sizing and scheduling. As an alternative, the so-called block planning concept is proposed which is based on a continuous representation of time. A mixed-integer...

The paper is concerned with the problem of optimal production planning in deterministic pull flow lines with multiple products. The objective is to specify the production policy that minimizes the total inventory and backlog costs overtime. Assuming constant product demands and non-decreasing...

We consider a production planning problem in an N-machine flowshop subject to breakdown and repair of machines and to non-negativity constraints on work-in process. The machine capacities and demand processes are assumed to be finite-state Markov chains. The problem is to choose the rates of...