A new method for unconstrained global function optimization, acronymed TRUST, is introduced. This method formulates optimization as the solution of a deterministic dynamical system incorporating terminal repellers and a novel subenergy tunneling function. Benchmark tests comparing this method to other global optimization procedures are presented, and the TRUST algorithm is shown to be substanti...

This paper considers the problem of designing a controller for an unknown plant based on input/output measurements. The new design method we propose is direct (no model identification of the plant is needed) and can be applied using a single set of data generated by the plant, with no need for specific experiments nor iterations. It is shown that the method searches for the global optimum of th...

The Stability Index Method (SIM) combines stochastic and deterministic algorithms to find global minima of multidimensional functions. The functions may be nonsmooth and may have multiple local minima. The method examines the change of the diameters of the minimizing sets for its stopping criterion. At first, the algorithm uses the uniform random distribution in the admissible set. Then normal ...

This paper reports a survey and case study research outcomes on the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to the ranking method of European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Business Excellence Model in Iran’s Automotive Industry and improving benchmarking process after assessment. Following the global trend, the Iranian industry leaders have introduced the EFQM practice to thei...

In many global optimization problems motivated by engineering applications, the number of function evaluations is severely limited by time or cost. To ensure that each of these evaluations contributes to the localization of good candidates for the role of global minimizer, a sequential choice of evaluation points is usually carried out. In particular, when Kriging is used to interpolate past ev...