The general flowshop scheduling problem is a production problem where a set of n jobs have to be processed with identical flow pattern on m machines. In permutation flowshops the sequence of jobs is the same on all machines. A significant research effort has been devoted for sequencing jobs in a flowshop minimizing the makespan. This paper describes the application of a Constructive Genetic Alg...

background: long wait time interval in emergency department (ed) of hospitals, from the patients’ point of view in ed is a major problem causing patients’ dissatisfaction and may result increasing in patient morbidity and indirectly nurses dissatisfaction. evaluation of wait time intervals in ed and giving nursing feedback may improve the quality of services, as well as patient satisfaction. th...

Scheduling in chemical flowshops is one of a number of important industrial problems which are potentially amenable to solution using the genetic algorithm. However the problem is not trivial: flowshops run continuously, and for efficient operation those controlling them must be able to adjust the order in which products are made as new requests are received. In addition, there are in principle...

Solving efficiently complex problems using metaheuristics, and in particular local search algorithms, requires incorporating knowledge about the problem to solve. In this paper, the permutation flowshop problem is studied. It is well known that in such problems, several solutions may have the same fitness value. As this neutrality property is an important issue, it should be taken into account ...

The hybrid or flexible flowshop problem is a generalization of the flowshop in such a way that every job can be processed by one among several machines on each machine stage. In recent years a number of effective exact methods have been developed. A major reason for this progress is the development of new job and machine based lower bounds as well as the rapidly increasing importance of constra...

This paper deals with a flowshop scheduling problem with a special blocking RCb (Release when Completing Blocking). In some industrial environments, such flexible production systems can be encountered. Genetic algorithms are good methods to solve these problems. A method is proposed to further improve solutions already found by genetic algorithms. It consists in marking out recurrent genes asso...

The two-stage assembly flowshop scheduling problem is addressed with the objective of minimizing total tardiness. An insertion algorithm, a genetic algorithm, and a hybrid of the insertion and genetic algorithms, are developed for the problem. Conducted computational experiments reveal that the hybrid algorithm significantly outperforms the genetic algorithm while the best performing algorithm ...

Due to the low risk of not insuring a healthy child for a short, finite period of time, it’s plausible that SCHIP mandatory wait periods, where a child must forgo private insurance for several months before enrolling in SCHIP, do not provide enough incentive for parents to keep their children enrolled in private insurance. Using data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIP...

Background Recognizing the significant impact of wait times for care for individuals with complex chronic conditions, we applied a LEAN methodology, namely – an adaptation of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to meet the needs of people with multiple chronic conditions and to improve wait times without additional resources or funding.   Methods Over an 18-month time period, staff applied a patient-cen...