International Journal of Industrial Engineering & Production Research

Abstract : A tandem automated guided vehicle (AGV) system deals with grouping workstations into some non-overlapping zones , and assigning exactly one AGV to each zone. This paper presents a new non-linear integer mathematical model to group n machines into N loops that minimizes both inter and intra-loop flows simultaneously. Due to computational difficulties of exact methods in solving our proposed model, a threshold accepting (TA) algorithm is proposed. To show its efficiency, a number of instances generated randomly are solved by this proposed TA and then compared with the LINGO solver package employing the branch-and-bound (B/B) method. The related computational results show that our proposed TA dominates the exact algorithm when the size of instances grows.

Abstract: Bi-level programming, a tool for modeling decentralized decisions, consists of the objective(s) of the leader at its first level and that is of the follower at the second level. Three level programming results when second level is itself a bi-level programming. By extending this idea it is possible to define multi-level programs with any number of levels. Supply chain planning problems are concerned with synchronizing and optimizing multiple activities involved in the enterprise, from the start of the process, such as procurement of the raw materials, through a series of process operations, to the end, such as distribution of the final product to customers.  Enterprise-wide supply chain planning problems naturally exhibit a multi-level decision network structure, where for example, one level may correspond to a local plant control/scheduling/planning problem and another level to a corresponding plant-wide planning/network problem. Such a multi-level decision network structure can be mathematically represented by using “multi-level programming” principles. This paper studies a “bi-level linear multi-objective decision making” model in with “interval” parameters and presents a solution method for solving it this method uses the concepts of tolerance membership function and multi-objective multi-level optimization when all parameters are imprecise and interval .

  Bi-level programming, a tool for modeling decentralized decisions, consists of the objective(s) of the leader at its first level and that is of the follower at the second level. Three level programming results when second level is itself a bi-level programming. By extending this idea it is possible to define multi-level programs with any number of levels. Supply chain planning problems are concerned with synchronizing and optimizing multiple activities involved in the enterprise, from the start of the process, such as procurement of the raw materials, through a series of process operations, to the end, such as distribution of the final product to customers.

  Enterprise-wide supply chain planning problems naturally exhibit a multi-level decision network structure, where for example, one level may correspond to a local plant control/scheduling/planning problem and another level to a corresponding plant-wide planning/network problem. Such a multi-level decision network structure can be mathematically represented by using “multi-level programming” principles. This paper studies a “bi-level linear multi-objective decision making” model in with “interval” parameters and presents a solution method for solving it this method uses the concepts of tolerance membership function and multi-objective multi-level optimization when all parameters are imprecise and interval .

  In this paper, we consider a flow shop scheduling problem with bypass consideration for minimizing the sum of earliness and tardiness costs. We propose a new mathematical modeling to formulate this problem. There are several constraints which are involved in our modeling such as the due date of jobs, the job ready times, the earliness and the tardiness cost of jobs, and so on. We apply adapted genetic algorithm based on bypass consideration to solve the problem. The basic parameters of this meta-heuristic are briefly discussed in this paper. Also a computational experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of the implemented methods. The implemented algorithm can be used to solve large scale flow shop scheduling problem with bypass effectively .

  Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem is one of the famous different kinds of decision making problems. In more cases in real situations, determining the exact values for MCDM problems is difficult or impossible. So, the values of alternatives with respect to the criteria or / and the values of criteria weights, are considered as fuzzy values (fuzzy numbers). In such conditions, the conventional crisp approaches for solving MCDM problems tend to be less effective for dealing with the imprecise or vagueness nature of the linguistic assessments. In this situation, the fuzzy MCDM methods are applied for solving MCDM problems. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy TOPSIS (for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method based on left and right scores for fuzzy MCDM problems. To show the applicability of the proposed method, two numerical examples are presented. As a result, our proposed method is precise, easy use and practical for solving MCDM problem with fuzzy data. Moreover, the proposed method considers the decision makers (DMs) preference in the decision making process. It seems that the proposed fuzzy TOPSIS method is flexible and easy to use and has a low computational volume .