This book illustrates the main characteristics, challenges and optimisation requirements of robotic disassembly. It provides a comprehensive insight on two crucial optimisation problems in the areas of robotic disassembly through a group of unified mathematical models. The online and offline optimisation of the operational sequence to dismantle a product, for example, is represented with a list of conflicting objectives and constraints. It allows the decision maker and the robots to match the situation automatically and efficiently. To identify a generic solution under different circumstances, classical metaheuristics that can be used for the optimisation of robotic disassembly are introduced in detail. A flexible framework is then presented to implement existing metaheuristics for sequence planning and line balancing in the circumstance of robotic disassembly. Optimisation of Robotic Disassembly for Remanufacturing provides practical case studies on typical product instances to help practitioners design efficient robotic disassembly with minimal manual operation, and offers comparisons of the state-of-the-art metaheuristics on solving the key optimisation problems. Therefore, it will be of interest to engineers, researchers, and postgraduate students in the area of remanufacturing.

Presents current developments in the field of evolutionary scheduling and demonstrates the applicability of evolutionary computational techniques to solving scheduling problems This book provides insight into the use of evolutionary computations (EC) in real-world scheduling, showing readers how to choose a specific evolutionary computation and how to validate the results using metrics and statistics. It offers a spectrum of real-world optimization problems, including applications of EC in industry and service organizations such as healthcare scheduling, aircraft industry, school timetabling, manufacturing systems, and transportation scheduling in the supply chain. It also features problems with different degrees of complexity, practical requirements, user constraints, and MOEC solution approaches. Evolutionary Computation in Scheduling starts with a chapter on scientometric analysis to analyze scientific literature in evolutionary computation in scheduling. It then examines the role and impacts of ant colony optimization (ACO) in job shop scheduling problems, before presenting the application of the ACO algorithm in healthcare scheduling. Other chapters explore task scheduling in heterogeneous computing systems and truck scheduling using swarm intelligence, application of sub-population scheduling algorithm in multi-population evolutionary dynamic optimization, task scheduling in cloud environments, scheduling of robotic disassembly in remanufacturing using the bees algorithm, and more. This book: Provides a representative sampling of real-world problems currently being tackled by practitioners Examines a variety of single-, multi-, and many-objective problems that have been solved using evolutionary computations, including evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence Consists of four main parts: Introduction to Scheduling Problems, Computational Issues in Scheduling Problems, Evolutionary Computation, and Evolutionary Computations for Scheduling Problems Evolutionary Computation in Scheduling is ideal for engineers in industries, research scholars, advanced undergraduates and graduate students, and faculty teaching and conducting research in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering.

This book is the first work dedicated to the Bees Algorithm. Following a gentle introduction to the main ideas underpinning the algorithm, the book presents recent results and developments relating to the algorithm and its application to optimisation problems in production and manufacturing. With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, production and manufacturing processes and systems have become more complex. To obtain the best performance from them requires efficient and effective optimisation techniques that do not depend on the availability of process or system models. Such models are usually either not obtainable or mathematically intractable due to the high degrees of nonlinearities and uncertainties in the processes and systems to be represented. The Bees Algorithm is a powerful swarm-based intelligent optimisation metaheuristic inspired by the foraging behaviour of honeybees. The algorithm is conceptually elegant and extremely easy to apply. All it needs to solve an optimisation problem is a means to evaluate the quality of potential solutions. This book demonstrates the simplicity, effectiveness and versatility of the algorithm and encourages its further adoption by engineers and researchers across the world to realise smart and sustainable manufacturing and production in the age of Industry 4.0 and beyond.

This book presents the proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region (RAAD), held in Bled, Slovenia, June 14-16, 2023. It gathers contributions by researchers from several countries on all major areas of robotic research, development and innovation, as well as new applications and current trends. The topics covered include: novel designs and applications of robotic systems, intelligent cooperating and service robots, advanced robot control, human-robot interfaces, robot vision systems, mobile robots, humanoid and walking robots, bio-inspired and swarm robotic systems, aerial, underwater and spatial robots, robots for ambient assisted living, medical robots and bionic prostheses, cognitive robots, cloud robotics, ethical and social issues in robotics, etc. Given its scope, the book offers a source of information and inspiration for researchers seeking to improve their work and gather new ideas for future developments.

This book presents a number of aspects to be considered in the development of disassembly automation, including the mechanical system, vision system and intelligent planner. The implementation of cognitive robotics increases the flexibility and degree of autonomy of the disassembly system. Disassembly, as a step in the treatment of end-of-life products, can allow the recovery of embodied value left within disposed products, as well as the appropriate separation of potentially-hazardous components. In the end-of-life treatment industry, disassembly has largely been limited to manual labor, which is expensive in developed countries. Automation is one possible solution for economic feasibility. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and experts in the field, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

This book contains selected papers from International Symposium for Production Research 2021, held on October 7–9, 2021, online, Turkey. The book reports recent advances in production engineering and operations. It explores topics including production research; production management; operations management; industry 4.0; industrial engineering; mechanical engineering; engineering management; and operational research. Presenting real-life applications, case studies, and mathematical models, this book is of interest to researchers, academics, and practitioners in the field of production and operation engineering. It provides both the results of recent research and practical solutions to real-world problems.