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In this paper, a fuzzy random minimum cost flow problem is presented. In this problem, cost parameters and decision variables are fuzzy random variables and fuzzy numbers respectively. The object of the problem is to find optimal flows of a capacitated network. Then, two algorithms are developed to solve the problem based on Er-expected value of fuzzy random variables and chance-constrained programming. Furthermore, the results of two algorithms will be compared. An illustrative example is also provided to clarify the concept  

Usually, resources are short in supply when earthquakes occur. In such emergency situations, disaster relief organizations must use these scarce resources efficiently to achieve the best possible emergency relief. This paper therefore proposes a multi-objective, multi-mode, multi-commodity, and multi-period stochastic model to manage the logistics of both commodities and injured people in the earthquake response. Also, a robust approach is developed and used to make sure that the distribution plan performs well under the various situations that can follow an earthquake. Afterwards, it proposes a solution methodology according to hierarchical objective functions and uses it to illustrate the... 

The purpose of this paper is to present a polynomial time algorithm which determines the lot sizes for purchase component in Material Requirement Planning (MRP) environments with deterministic time-phased demand with zero lead time. In this model, backlog is not permitted, the unit purchasing price is based on the all-units discount system and resale of the excess units is possible at the ordering time. The properties of an optimal order policy are argued and on the basis of them, a branch and bound algorithm is presented to construct an optimal sequence of order policies. In the proposed B&B algorithm, some useful fathoming rules have been proven to make the algorithm very efficient. By... 

Scheduling sports leagues has drawn significant attention to itself in recent years, as it involves considerable revenue as well as challenging combinatorial optimization problems. A particular class of these problems is the Traveling Tournament Problem (TTP) which focuses on minimizing the total traveling distance for teams. In this paper, an efficient simulated annealing approach is presented for TTP which applies two simultaneous and disparate models for the problem in order to search the solutions space more effectively. Also, a computationally efficient modified greedy scheme is proposed for constructing a favorable initial solution for the simulated annealing algorithm. Our... 

In this paper, seller-buyer supply chain coordination with general side-payment contracts is introduced to gain the maximum possible chain profit. In our model, the logistics costs for both buyer and seller are considered and the final demand is also supposed to be a decreasing function of the retail price. Since parties aim to maximize their individual profits, the contractual parameters are set in a way that these decisions become aligned with system optimal decisions. Therefore, a side payment contract is suggested in our model to assign the chain surplus profit to the chain members such that they have no intention to leave the coalition. Then, we change the contract into a quantity... 

In the literature, substantial researches have been carried out on supply chain coordination. The majority of these studies suggest a mechanism that enforces the supply chain members to follow the strategies that produce the equilibrium of an integrated supply chain. Moreover, most of researches do not consider the competition among supply chains  

In this study, a supply chain model consisting of a single product, one supplier and one retailer is considered. Transportation times are constant and demands at the retailer are assumed to be generated by a stationary Poisson process. Demands not covered immediately from inventory are backordered. The retailer carries inventory and replenishes stock according to a (Q, R) policy. The supplier has online information about the demand at the retailer and uses this information to replenish its stock. The order size at the supplier is a multiple integer to the retailer's order size. Considering order costs for the retailer and the supplier, we derive the exact cost function for this inventory... 

In this paper, we have discussed the results of sensitivity analysis in a payoff matrix of the Matching Pennies game. After representing the game as a LP model, the sensitivity analysis of the elements of the payoff matrix is presented. The game value and the optimal strategies for different values of parameters are determined and compared  

The general goal of the facility layout problem is to arrange a given number of facilities to minimize the total cost associated with the known or projected interactions between them. One of the special classes of the facility layout problem is the Single Row Facility Layout Problem (SRFLP), which consists of finding an optimal linear placement of rectangular facilities with varying dimensions on a straight line. This paper first presents and proves a theorem to find the optimal solution of a special case of SRFLP. The results obtained by this theorem prove to be very useful in reducing the computational efforts when a new algorithm based on tabu search for the SRFLP is proposed in this... 

In this paper, first a fuzzy random resource-constrained project scheduling problem is presented. The object of the problem is to find the optimal scheduling of project activities. In this model, duration of project activities is a fuzzy random variable. Then, the proposed model is formulated by using the expected value of fuzzy random variables as an IP model. An illustrative example is also provided to clarify the concept. © 2010 World Academic Press, UK. All rights reserved  

In this paper, we consider a dual-sourcing model with constant demand and stochastic lead times. Two suppliers may be different in terms of purchasing prices and lead-time parameters. The ordering takes place when the inventory level depletes to a reorder level, and the order is split among two suppliers. Unlike previous works in the order splitting literature, the supply lead time between vendor and buyer as well as unit purchasing prices is considered to be order quantity dependent. The proposed model finds out the optimal reorder point, order quantity and splitting proportion, using a solution procedure. Numerical results show that neglecting the relationship between ordering batch size... 

The graph colouring problem, as an important NP-complete problem, is considered in this paper and a hybrid meta-heuristic approach is developed to solve it. The initial solution of the algorithm, generated by a heuristic method, is used by a simulated annealing (SA) approach to generate new solutions until no progress in a number of solutions reported. At this stage, the algorithm will use a tabu search routine and this local search operator will be followed for some iterations. After finding a better solution, the algorithm is again followed through SA. Efficiency of the algorithm is showed through various experiments on well-known benchmark problems of DIMACS. Comparison with the available... 

In this research, we investigate a three-stage supply chain with one supplier, several manufacturers and multiple retailers where the supplier provides a common raw material to each manufacturer, who in turn uses a single stage production facility to convert it into final products that are delivered at fixed lot sizes to retailers. An integrated economic procurement, production, and delivery model is developed whose objective is to find the common production cycle length, production sequences of final products at manufacturers and delivery frequencies of final products to retailers minimizing the total costs of considered supply chain. We propose an analytical solution procedure and an... 

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is a well-known metaheuristic in which a colony of artificial ants cooperate in exploring good solutions to a combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, an ACO algorithm is presented for the graph coloring problem. This ACO algorithm conforms to max-min ant system structure and exploits a local search heuristic to improve its performance. Experimental results on DIMACS test instances show improvements over existing ACO algorithms of the graph coloring problem  

There exist various service systems that have hierarchical structure. In hierarchical service networks, facilities at different levels provide different types of services. For example, in health care systems, general centers provide low-level services such as primary health care services, while the specialized hospitals provide high-level services. Because of demand congestion in service networks, location of servers and allocation of demand nodes have a strong impact on the length of queues at servers as well as on the response times to service calls. The thrust of this article is the development of hierarchical location-allocation models for congested systems by employing queueing theory... 

In this paper, we address a basic production planning problem with price dependent demand and stochastic yield of production. We use price and target quantity as decision variables to lower the risk of low yield. The value of risk control becomes more important especially for products with short life cycle. This is because, the profit implications of low yield might be unbearable in the short run. We apply Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) to model the risk. CVaR measure is a coherent risk measure and thereby having nice conceptual and mathematical underpinnings. It is also widely used in practice. We consider the problem under general demand function and general distribution function of... 

In this paper, a "Game Theory" approach for finding an optimal path in a "Wireless Sensor Network" is discussed. WSN is one of the most interesting research fields in the communication networks, and is the center of attention in recent years. In our model, a pricing and payment technique is presented to obtain an optimal path in a WSN by considering reliability, energy and traffic load. The proposed algorithm is able to find a path which improves network lifetime, load distribution and path reliability  

In this paper, a fuzzy random minimum cost flow problem is presented. In this problem, cost parameters and decision variables are fuzzy random variables and fuzzy numbers respectively. The object of the problem is to find optimal flows of a capacitated network. Then, two algorithms are developed to solve the problem based on Er-expected value of fuzzy random variables and chance-constrained programming. Furthermore, the results of two algorithms will be compared. An illustrative example is also provided to clarify the concept  

The Facility Layout Problem (FLP) is the problem of locating each department in a long plant floor without any overlap between departments in order to minimize the material handling cost. The main purpose of this study is to show the effectiveness of a robust approach to solve FLP. In this study, it is assumed that the departments’ length and width are not predetermined. For modeling this kind of uncertainty, the size of each department is considered as a bounded variable and two new parameters are also introduced to implement a robust approach. Moreover, a new adaptive algorithm is designed to determine the robust layout with respect to the decision makers’ requirements. Furthermore, the... 

In this paper, a special class of redundancy optimization problem with fuzzy random variables is presented. In this model, fuzzy random lifetimes are considered as basic parameters and the Er-expected of system lifetime is used as a major type of system performance. Then a redundancy optimization problem is formulated as a binary integer programming model. Furthermore, illustrative numerical examples are also given to clarify the methods discussed in this paper