The manufacturing industry is characterized by large-scale interdependent networks as companies buy goods from one another, but do not control or design the overall flow of materials. The result is a complex emergent structure with which companies connect to each other. The topology of this...

Researchers, practitioners and enterprise software providers are realising the potential of agent-based technology to automate supply chain procurement to achieve consistent, traceable decision making. As the complexity of supply chains grow, these systems will gain more attention. In this...

Although RFID is seen by many as a revolutionary enabler of automated data capture, confusion still remains as to how manufacturing organisations can identify cost-effective opportunities for its use. Managers view promotional business case estimates as unjustified, simulation based analysis and...

This paper describes the challenges faced by frontier technology education, typical among large integrated EU projects. These include an evolving nature, the scarcity of experts and established material, and the need for relevant material. Classical approaches to learning seem to not adequately...

This paper reviews recent patents that make use of Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) technology. The patents are classified into optimisation in engineering design, health management, consumer surveying, music generation and image processing. It is pointed that the coupling of...

Consideration of qualitative factors is an integral and necessary part of design optimization. In this paper, we consider qualitative factors as design objectives to be optimized and attempt to optimize qualitative and quantitative criteria together. Interactive evolutionary computation (IEC)...

We propose a sequential interactive genetic algorithm (IGA), multi-objective IGA and parallel IGA, and evaluate them with both simulated and real users. Combining human evaluation with an optimization system for engineering design enables us to embed domainspecific knowledge that is frequently...

This paper presents a case study on the research and development of an RFID-based work-in-progress container tracking system at a confectionery manufacturer. We report on the management of the RFID project, the system design and the economic evaluation of the solution as compared to the...