For over fifty years now, the famous problem of flow shop and job shop scheduling has been receiving the attention of researchers in operations research, engineering, and computer science. Over the past several years, there has been a spurt of interest in computational intelligence heuristics and metaheuristics for solving this problem. This book seeks to present a study of the state of the art in this field and also directions for future research.

For over fifty years now, the famous problem of flow shop and job shop scheduling has been receiving the attention of researchers in operations research, engineering, and computer science. Over the past several years, there has been a spurt of interest in computational intelligence heuristics and metaheuristics for solving this problem. This book seeks to present a study of the state of the art in this field and also directions for future research.

For over fifty years now, the famous problem of flow shop and job shop scheduling has been receiving the attention of researchers in operations research, engineering, and computer science. Over the past several years, there has been a spurt of interest in computational intelligence heuristics and metaheuristics for solving this problem. This book seeks to present a study of the state of the art in this field and also directions for future research.

This title presents a large variety of models and algorithms dedicated to the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP), which aims at scheduling at minimal duration a set of activities subject to precedence constraints and limited resource availabilities. In the first part, the standard variant of RCPSP is presented and analyzed as a combinatorial optimization problem. Constraint programming and integer linear programming formulations are given. Relaxations based on these formulations and also on related scheduling problems are presented. Exact methods and heuristics are surveyed. Computational experiments, aiming at providing an empirical insight on the difficulty of the problem, are provided. The second part of the book focuses on several other variants of the RCPSP and on their solution methods. Each variant takes account of real-life characteristics which are not considered in the standard version, such as possible interruptions of activities, production and consumption of resources, cost-based approaches and uncertainty considerations. The last part presents industrial case studies where the RCPSP plays a central part. Applications are presented in various domains such as assembly shop and rolling ingots production scheduling, project management in information technology companies and instruction scheduling for VLIW processor architectures.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2011, held in Zhengzhou, China, in August 2011. The 94 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 832 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on intelligent computing in scheduling; local feature descriptors for image processing and recognition; combinatorial and numerical optimization; machine learning theory and methods; intelligent control and automation; knowledge representation/reasoning and expert systems; intelligent computing in pattern recognition; intelligent computing in image processing; intelligent computing in computer vision; biometrics with applications to individual security/forensic sciences; modeling, theory, and applications of positive systems; sparse manifold learning methods and applications; advances in intelligent information processing.

Considered one of the most innovative research directions, computational intelligence (CI) embraces techniques that use global search optimization, machine learning, approximate reasoning, and connectionist systems to develop efficient, robust, and easy-to-use solutions amidst multiple decision variables, complex constraints, and tumultuous environments. CI techniques involve a combination of learning, adaptation, and evolution used for intelligent applications. Computational Intelligence Paradigms for Optimization Problems Using MATLAB®/ Simulink® explores the performance of CI in terms of knowledge representation, adaptability, optimality, and processing speed for different real-world optimization problems. Focusing on the practical implementation of CI techniques, this book: Discusses the role of CI paradigms in engineering applications such as unit commitment and economic load dispatch, harmonic reduction, load frequency control and automatic voltage regulation, job shop scheduling, multidepot vehicle routing, and digital image watermarking Explains the impact of CI on power systems, control systems, industrial automation, and image processing through the above-mentioned applications Shows how to apply CI algorithms to constraint-based optimization problems using MATLAB® m-files and Simulink® models Includes experimental analyses and results of test systems Computational Intelligence Paradigms for Optimization Problems Using MATLAB®/ Simulink® provides a valuable reference for industry professionals and advanced undergraduate, postgraduate, and research students.