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Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266

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Expert Systems with Applications


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

Genetic algorithms for coordinated scheduling of production and air transportation


M. Rostamian Delavar a, M. Hajiaghaei-Keshteli b, S. Molla-Alizadeh-Zavardehi b,*
a
Department of Industrial Computing, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, National University of Malaysia (UKM), 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
b
Department of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Masjed Soleyman Branch, Masjed Soleyman, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: A main issue in supply chain management is coordinating production and distribution decisions. To
Supply chain coordination achieve effective logistics scheduling, it is critical to integrate these two functions and plan them in a
Air transportation coordinated way. The problem is to determine both production schedule and air transportation allocation
Single machine scheduling of orders to optimize customer service at minimum total cost. In order to solve the given problem, two
Genetic algorithm
genetic algorithm (GA) approaches are developed. However, the effectiveness of most metaheuristic algo-
Taguchi experimental design
rithms is significantly depends on the correct choice of parameters. Hence, a Taguchi experimental design
method is applied to set and estimate the proper values of GAs parameters to improve their performance.
For the purpose of performance evaluation of proposed algorithms, various problem sizes are utilized and
the computational results of GAs are compared with each other. Moreover, we investigate the impacts of
the rise in the problem size on the performance of our algorithms.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction minimizing total cost. Integrated schedule of production and air


transportation is very important, because the cost of missing a
The integration of supply chain systems has been the subject of shipment in a scheduled flight is quite heavy as it should be trans-
significant debate and discussion. In comparison with the tradi- ported by charter flights. Therefore in this paper, there is an extra
tional manufacturing environments, the possession of concur- cost corresponding to charter flights considered as ‘departure time
rency, agility and collaboration between supply chain partners tardiness’. The ‘departure time earliness’ cost happens as a result of
becomes one of the main goals of most global companies (Chen, the need to store the order at the production facility or waiting
1996; Jung & Jeong, 2005). charges at the airport. Delivery penalties are incurred by delivering
Some studies have tried to integrate production and distribu- an order either earlier or later than the committed due date to cus-
tion decisions. The main reasons of integration are increasing lev- tomers. The ‘delivery tardiness’ cost includes customer dissatisfac-
els of global competition, which creating a more demanding tion, contract penalties, loss of sales, and potential loss of
customer, demand driven markets and the emergence of just in reputation for manufacturer and retailers. If the arrival time of
time delivery. Research in this area is mainly focused on road allocated orders in air transportation model is earlier than its
transportation and there has been a relative neglect of other trans- due date, retailers encounter the storing cost of orders which is
portation modes while there are sizable sectors of industry such as considered as ‘delivery earliness’ cost.
air transportation. Many companies need to reduce their penalty There is a little research on production scheduling considering
costs to remain in competitional global markets and also they have air transportation. Li, Sivakumar, Mathirajan, and Ganesan (2004)
a great desire to satisfy their customer’s needs within fast and in studied the synchronization of single machine scheduling and air
time delivery, so focusing on air transportation is inevitable. transportation with single destination. The overall problem is
Although air transportation is costly, it reduces other costs such decomposed into air transportation problem and single machine
as earliness and tardiness delivery costs. Because our goal is to scheduling problem. They formulated two problems and then pre-
minimize the total cost, we would consider the tradeoff between sented a backward heuristic algorithm for single machine
all costs occurred in a product to choose the best strategy. Hence, scheduling. They extended their previous work to consider multi-
in this research, we study the problem of integration of production ple destinations in air transportation problem (Li, Ganesan, &
and air transportation scheduling to achieve accurate scheduling Sivakumar, 2005). They showed the air transportation allocation
has the structure of regular transportation problem, while the sin-
gle machine scheduling problem is NP-hard (Li, Ganesan, & Sivaku-
* Corresponding author.
mar, 2006a). They also proposed a forward heuristic and a
E-mail addresses: mr.delavar@gmail.com (M. Rostamian Delavar), mostafahaji@
iaumis.ac.ir (M. Hajiaghaei-Keshteli), saber.alizadeh@iaumis.ac.ir (S. Molla- backward heuristic for single machine (Li, Ganesan, & Sivakumar,
Alizadeh-Zavardehi). 2006b). They extended their work by considering parallel

0957-4174/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2010.05.060
8256 M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266

machines in production (Li, Sivakumar, & Ganesan, 2008). The Parameters


problem was formulated as a parallel machine with departure time Df departure time of ordinary flight f at the local airport
earliness penalties. They also showed that the parallel machine Af arrival time of ordinary flight f at the destination
scheduling problem is NP-complete and then presented a Qi quantity of order i
simulated annealing based heuristic algorithm to solve the parallel ai delivery earliness penalty cost (/unit/h) of order i
machine problem. They compared their simulated annealing algo- bi delivery tardiness penalty cost (/unit/h) of order i
rithm with an operation method of a factory in Singapore (Li, di due date of order i
Sivakumar, Fu, & Jin, 2007). Zandieh and Molla-Alizadeh-Zavardehi Desi destination of order i
desf destination of ordinary flight f
(2008) proposed some mathematical models for two problems
Captf available tth capacity type of ordinary flight f
with different delivery assumptions (with delivery tardiness and
Tctf transportation cost of each product unit when allocated to
without delivery tardiness) regarding due window. Zandieh and
tth capacity type of ordinary flight f
Molla-Alizadeh-Zavardehi (2009) extended their work considering
pi processing time of orderi (/unit)
various capacities with different transportation cost and also char- a0i departure time earliness penalty cost (/unit/h) of order i
ter flights (commercial flights). There have been considerable re- b0i departure time tardiness penalty cost (/unit) of order i
searches conducted in production–distribution integration with MDi maximum departure time of charter flight for order i that
emphasis on the road transportation and vehicle routing problem. can reach to its due date (it is equal to delivery due date
There are also reviews on integrated analysis of production–distri- of order i subtract from the time of charter flight for order i)
bution systems (Erenguc, Simpson, & Vakharia, 1999; Goe-
tschalckx, Vidal, & Dogan, 2002; Sarmiento & Nagi, 1999; Vidal & Constant
Goetschalckx, 1997). LN a large positive number
Four sections follow this Introduction. The next section de-
scribes the problem’s details and elaborates the mathematical for- Variables
mulation of our model. The proposed GAs are explained in Section qtif quantity of portion of order i allocated to tth capacity type
3. Section 4, describes the Taguchi experimental design and com- of ordinary flight f
pares the computational results. Finally, in Section 5, conclusions q(T+1)i quantity of portion of order i allocated to its charter flight
are provided and some areas of further research are then ci completion time of order i
presented. uip 1 if order i is in position p, 0 otherwise

Li et al. (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2008, 2004) and Zandieh and
2. Mathematical model and descriptions Molla-Alizadeh-Zavardehi (2008) used two type capacities in each
ordinary flight with two different transportation cost. For exten-
In this section, we provide a mathematical programming model sion of their work and generating more realistic schedule, similar
for integrated production and air transportation scheduling prob- to Zandieh and Molla-Alizadeh-Zavardehi (2009) we assumed that
lem. The aim is to determine an optimal allocation of orders to in many industries, we may have only one or even more than two
the existing transportation capacities and also specify sequence type capacities in each flight. Therefore, we considered T type
and completion times of these orders in production in such a capacities by Captf in the notation. However, if we have h (h < T)
way that the total cost of supply chain is minimized. The model type capacities for an ordinary flight f, then the Captf, i.e.
is based on the model developed by Zandieh and Molla-Alizadeh- t = h + 1, . . . , T will be fixed to zero. In addition, considering charter
Zavardehi (2009) for synchronized production and air transporta- flights and delivery tardiness, the orders can be transported by
tion scheduling problem. The assumptions used in this problem charter flights. With respect to the problem defined above, a math-
are: ematical programming model is formulated as follows:
 !
1. The plant is treated as a single machine. X
T X
N X
F
min 0; ci  Df  LN 1  
min 1
Tctf  qtif
2. No idle time is allowed. t¼1 i¼1 f ¼1
c i  D f  LN
3. There are multiple flights in the planning period with different    
þ a0i  ðDf  ci Þ  qtif þ ai  maxð0; di  Af Þ  qtif
transportation specifications such as cost, capacity, etc. !!
4. Business processing time and cost, together with loading time  
and loading cost for each flight are included in the transporta-
þ bi  maxð0; Af  di Þ  qtif
tion time and transportation cost.  1
 !!
5. Local transportation transfers products from the plant to the min 0; ci  Df  LN  0 
þ 1 1
bi  qtif
airport. Local transportation time is assumed to be included in ci  Df  LN
transportation time.    
þ min a0i ; ai  maxð0; MDi  ci Þ  qtif
6. Local transportation can transfer an order to the airport when
N  
the order is produced completely.   X
þ bi  maxð0; ci  MDi Þ  qtif þ b0i  qðTþ1Þi
7. Orders released into plant for the planning period are delivered i¼1
within the same planning period, which means there are no  
þ minða0i ; ai Þ  maxð0; MDi  ci Þ  qðTþ1Þi
production backlogs.
 
þ bi  max ð0; ci  MDi Þ  qðTþ1Þi ð1Þ
The notations that will be used to describe the problem and
algorithm are as follows:
s:t:
!
Indices X
T

i, i0 0
order/job index, i, i = 1, 2, . . . , N qtif  ðDesi  desf Þ ¼ 0; i ¼ 1; . . . ; N; f ¼ 1; . . . ; F ð2Þ
t¼1
f, f0 ordinary flight index, f, f0 = 1, 2, . . . , F
k destination index, k = 1, 2, . . . , K X
N
qtif 6 Captf ; t ¼ 1; . . . ; T; f ¼ 1; . . . ; F ð3Þ
p, p0 position or sequence of order i, p, p0 = 1, . . . , N
i¼1
M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266 8257

X
T X
F lue is assigned to each chromosome according to its performance.
qtif þ qðTþ1Þi ¼ Q i ; i ¼ 1; . . . ; N ð4Þ The more desirable the chromosome, the larger the fitness value.
t¼1 f ¼1
The population evolves by a set of operators until some stopping
X
N
criterion is met. A typical iteration of a GA, a generation, proceeds
uip ¼ 1; i ¼ 1; . . . ; N ð5Þ
p¼1
as follows. The best chromosomes of the current population are
copied directly to the next generation (reproduction). A selection
X
N
uip ¼ 1; p ¼ 1; . . . ; N ð6Þ mechanism chooses chromosomes of the current population in
i¼1 such a way that the chromosome with the higher fitness value
!! has a greater probability of being selected (roulette wheel). The se-
X
N X
p1 X
N
uip pi Q i þ ui0 p0 Pi0 Q i0 ¼ ci ; i ¼ 1; . . . ; N ð7Þ lected chromosomes mate and generate new offspring (crossover).
p¼1 p0 ¼1 i0 ¼1 After the mating process, each offspring might mutate by another
uip 2 f0; 1g; i ¼ 1; . . . ; N; p ¼ 1; . . . ; N ð8Þ mechanism called mutation. The new population is then evaluated
qtif ¼ Non-negative integer variable ð9Þ again and the whole process is repeated (Goldberg, 1989).
We design two kinds of genetic approaches. The first approach
qðTþ1Þi ¼ Non-negative integer variable ð10Þ
(GA1) is similar to the other previous researches in the synchroni-
zation of air transportation and production scheduling. In these re-
The model considers both transportation allocation and production
searches, considering the mathematical model, at first a
scheduling (orders allocations to ordinary flights and charter flights,
transportation allocation is obtained and then with having that
determination of sequence and also completion time of orders). Due
allocation in mind, a heuristic or a metaheuristic is applied to
to the completion times, some orders might not reach to their allo-
achieve a production sequence and their completion times. In this
cated flights and must be transported by charter flights. Thereupon,
approach, at first a GA is used to solve the transportation problem
the objective function includes three parts. The first part is about
and find a solution with minimum transportation cost and then an-
the allocated orders which can reach to their ordinary flights and in-
other GA is applied to the achieved solution to generate the pro-
cludes transportation cost of ordinary flights, departure time earli-
duction sequence. Stopping criterion is set to be the CPU time
ness penalties, and total delivery earliness tardiness penalties. The
(CT) which is dedicated to the entire algorithm. To obtain the stop-
second part describes the allocated orders which cannot reach to
ping criterion for each of the transportation allocation and the pro-
their ordinary flights. Finally, the allocated charter flights are pre-
duction scheduling, the time is divided as follows:
sented in the last part. Since these two last parts should be trans-
ported by charter flights, their costs are the same. These two parts
CPU time for transportation’s GA (TCT) = CPU time  time per-
include transportation cost of charter flights, minimum of departure
centage of transportation (TPT).
time and delivery earliness penalties, and delivery tardiness penal-
CPU time for production’s GA (PCT) = CPU time  time percent-
ties. Those orders which are supposed to be transported by charter
age of production = CPU time  (1  TPT).
flights and their completion time is less than their MD, if a0i 6 ai ,
departure time of charter flight i will be MDi and if a0i P ai , the
Other input parameters in the GA1 algorithm are population
departure time will be ci. This happens because the departure time
size of transportation (PST), population size of production (PSP),
of charter flights are arbitrary. So we consider minða0i ; ai Þ as the ear-
reproduction percentage of transportation (TPr), reproduction per-
liness penalty. Constraint sets (2) ensures that if order i and ordin-
centage of production (PPr), mutation probability of transportation
ary flight f have different destinations, order i cannot be allocated to
(TPm), mutation probability of production (PPm). The algorithm is
ordinary flight f. Constraint sets (3) states that the capacity 1 to T of
depicted in Fig. 1.
ordinary flight f is not exceeded. Constraint set (4) ensures that or-
Since the transportation cost is just a part of the total cost, hav-
der i is completely allocated. Constraint sets (5) and (6) state that
ing a minimum transportation cost does not ensure that the
each job has to be assigned to a position, and each position has to
respective solution has the minimum total cost. So in the second
be covered by a job. Constraint set (7) calculates completion time
approach (GA2), we perform a production schedule’s GA to some
of jobs.
more transportation allocations. To more clarify, let us consider a
simple example of two orders (n = 2) and two flights (F = 2) with
3. Proposed genetic algorithms a sufficient capacity, same destination and different departure
times. The orders essential information is given in Tables 1 and
The use of conventional tools for solving the mathematical pro- 2, and in Fig. 2.
gramming models problem is limited due to the complexity of the
problem and the large number of variables and constraints, partic- Solution I: X12 = 10, X22 = 10.
ularly for realistically sized problems (Li, Hendry, & Teunter, 2007). Transportation cost = (10 + 10)  18 = 360.
Regarded as the time complexity function and also a class of com- Production earliness penalty = (12  2)  2 + (12  5)  2 = 34.
binational optimization problems known as nondeterministic Delivery earliness penalty = 0.
polynomial-time hard (NP-hard), two genetic algorithms are ap- Delivery tardiness penalty = (13  8)  8 + (13  9)  8 = 72.
plied to solve the problem. Total cost = 360 + 34 + 0 + 72 = 466.
The basic concepts of GAs, introduced by Holland (1975), have Solution II: X11 = 10, X21 = 10.
been successfully applied to solve many combinatorial optimiza- Transportation cost = (10 + 10)  20 = 400.
tion problems. The Genetic algorithms are search algorithms based Production earliness penalty = (6  2)  2 + (6  5)  2 = 8.
on Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ concept, meaning that good par- Delivery earliness penalty = (8  7)  3 + (9  7)  3 = 9.
ents produce better offspring. Nowadays, GAs are considered to be Delivery tardiness penalty = 0.
one of the typical metaheuristic approaches for tackling both dis- Total cost = 400 + 8 + 9 = 417.
crete and continuous optimization problems. GAs have been
shown as a robust optimization technique to solve many real world As shown above, transportation cost in the first solution is
problems (Gen & Cheng, 1997, 2000). much less than the second one. But since other types of costs (pro-
The GA searches a problem space with a population of chromo- duction earliness penalty and delivery earliness tardiness penal-
somes, each of which represents an encoded solution. A fitness va- ties) in the latter are less than the equivalent costs in the former,
8258 M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266

Start

Stopping criterion YES


Set parameters met? (PCT)

Generate initial population (Transportation Allocation)


NO

Evaluate fitness of initial population (cost of Transportation Allocation)

Reproduction Selection (Roulette wheel)


YES
Stopping criterion
met?(TCT) Production’s Crossover

Production’s Mutation
NO Output the best transportation allocation
Evaluate fitness of new population (Cost of Transportation Allocation)

Reproduction Selection (Roulette wheel) Output the best production sequence

Transportation’s Crossover
End

Transportation’s Mutation

Evaluate fitness of new population (cost of transportation allocation)

Generate initial population considering transportation allocation (Production Sequence)

Evaluate fitness of initial population (Total Cost)


1. Calculate completion time of orders using production sequence
2. Determine allocated orders which cannot meet their flights and assign these orders
to commercial flights
3. Evaluate total cost(Transportation cost of allocated orders to flights, departure time
earliness penalty and delivery earliness tardiness penalties)

Fig. 1. Proposed GA1’s flowchart. TCT: transportation CPU time, PCT: production CPU time.

Table 1 structural difference of GA1 and GA2, the stopping criterion of each
Orders essential parameters. production sequence is set to be the number of iterations. By
i Qi pi di a0i ai bi increasing the problem’s size, due to larger solution space, more
iteration should be devoted to the production sequence algorithm.
1 10 2 8 2 3 8
2 10 3 9 2 3 8 Hence, the number of iterations in the production sequence algo-
rithm of GA2 is set to be ‘‘constant coefficient  n”. The constant
coefficient is tuned in the parameter tuning section. This total pro-
cedure continues until the termination time is over. In the GA2, the
Table 2
Flights essential parameters. stopping criterion of the production sequence algorithm is differ-
ent from the GA1, which is the number of iterations instead of time
f Df Af Cf
percentage of production. The other input parameters are the same
1 6 7 20 in both GAs.
2 12 13 18
In the following subsections we describe all parameters and
operators used in the proposed GAs.

it has lower total cost, so it is better. Thus, it is obvious that a solu- 3.1. Encoding scheme
tion with minimum transportation cost may not have the lowest
total cost. Since orders and flights have different destinations, allocating
In the second approach (GA2), as shown in Fig. 3, only if a better an order to each available ordinary flight is not possible; so the or-
transportation solution is obtained at the end of each generation of ders should only be allocated to the flights with the same destina-
transportation allocation’s GA, the production schedule’s GA is ac- tions. For instance, in Fig. 4, the order 1 which is for destination 3,
quired to achieve the production sequence. Similar to GA1, CPU cannot be allocated to the flights 1, 2, 5, and 6, flying to destina-
time is considered as the stopping criterion. But considering the tions 1 and 2. Therefore the transportation matrix is modified:

D1 A1 d1 d2 D2 A2

1 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Fig. 2. Gantt chart of the solution with related parameters.


M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266 8259

Start
YES TBTA=BTA
Is ITGA=1
TBPS=BPS
Set parameters
NO

Generate initial population (Transportation Allocation); (ITGA) =1 YES


Is BPS better than
TBPS?
Evaluate fitness of initial population (cost of Transportation Allocation)
NO
Set the best individual of initial population as BTA YES
Stopping criterion
met? (CT) Output the TBTA and TBPS
Generate initial population considering BTA (production sequence)
NO
Evaluate fitness of initial population (Total cost) End
ITGA=ITGA+1

Stopping criterion YES


met? (CT)
Reproduction Selection (Roulette Wheel)

Output the best population sequence Transportation’s Crossover


NO

Transportation’s Mutation

Reproduction Selection (Roulette wheel)

Evaluate fitness of new population (Cost of Transportation Allocation)


Production’s Crossover

Set the best allocation in new population as BTA


Production’s Mutation

NO
Is BTA better than
Evaluate fitness of new pop (Total cost) TBTA?

YES

Fig. 3. Proposed GA2’s flowchart. CT: CPU time, ITGA: iteration of transportation’s GA, BTA: best transportation allocation, BPS: best production sequence, TBTA: total best
transportation allocation, TBPS: total best production sequence.

As shown in Fig. 5, the matrix is divided into K (total number of Desi 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3


destinations) submatrices in which the orders and the flights have
identical destination numbers. For allocation process, available Desf i 2 6 7 10 3 5 8 1 4 9
heuristic methods and operators are acquired on each of these f
submatrices. 9 9 9 9
1 3

5 5 5 5
1 4
3.2. Initial procedure
7 7 7
2 1
The significant role of the initial solution on the quality of the
3 3 3
final result of a search procedure has already been recognized 2 6
and emphasized by many researchers in recent years (Jungwatta- 4 4 4
nakita, Reodechaa, Chaovalitwongsea, & Werner, 2009; M’Hallah, 3 2
2007; Naderi, Zandieh, Ghoshe Balagh, & Roshanaei, 2009). What 7 7 7
3 5
has been utilized so far by the majority of researchers to generate
the initial solution for their algorithms has been the random gen-
Fig. 5. Representation encoding for transportation allocation.

Desi 3 1 2 3 2 1 1 2 3 1
eration of the initial solution, which has led them to poor quality
Desf
i 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 solutions. Therefore, in order to acquire a satisfactory level of solu-
f tion quality for such a hard combinatorial problem, meticulous
7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
2 1 considerations should be given to the intelligent selection of their
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 initialization procedure. In this work, several types of initial proce-
3 2
dures have been used. In the following subsections we describe the
1 3
9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 initial procedures which used for each of air transportation and
production scheduling.
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
1 4

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 3.2.1. Initial procedures used in air transportation


3 5
The well-known heuristic methods in transportation literature
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
2 6 are Northwest Corner Method, Row Minimum Method, Column
Minimum Method, Least-Cost Method, and Vogel’s Approximation
Fig. 4. Orders transportation cost. Method. Generally, the Vogel’s Approximation Method mostly
8260 M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266

generates better solution among other methods. But, considering Orders


the specialty of our transportation model in which transportation 1 2 3 4Dummy Capacity
Flights
costs in each row (flight) are identical (because transportation cost 10 10 10 10

to a specific destination is the same), we cannot use Vogel’s 1 400


Approximation Method directly. For the same reason, Row Mini-
5 5 5 5
mum, Column Minimum, and Least-Cost methods, are not applica-
ble for the solution algorithm. For these methods, which cannot be 2 300
used directly, we present an algorithm as follows: 10 10 10 10
Modified least-cost method algorithm:
3 200

Step 1: If the transportation problem is unbalanced, it is chan- Quantity 200 100 300 300 900
ged into a balanced one by introducing a dummy flight or a
dummy order. Fig. 7. Balanced and allocated transportation matrix.
Step 2: Find the row with minimum cost. If there are more than
one row with minimum cost, select one of them randomly.
Step 3: Randomly select a column. DD: 3 5 4 2 6 1
Step 4: Allocate the maximum possible value which is equal to EMD: 5 3 4 2 1 6
minimum value of flight’s capacity and order’s quantity to the SPT: 2 5 3 1 6 4
crossing position (cell) of selected row and column. LPT: 4 6 1 3 5 2
Step 5: Subtract the allocated value from both flight’s capacity
(selected row) and order’s quantity (selected column).
Step 6: If the capacity of a flight or the quantity of an order
becomes zero, do not consider that row or column in the next 3.3. Selection mechanism
steps, and when both of them become zero spontaneously,
eliminate both row and column from the remaining In the model, we want to minimize the objective function. Be-
considerations. cause in Roulette-Wheel we give more chance to the solution
Step 7: Iterate steps 2–6, until sum of updated flight’s capacity which has greater fitness value, we consider the fitness value as
and order’s quantity becomes zero. follow:
Fitness Value ¼ 1=Objective Function
In order to understand this algorithm better, we design the fol-
lowing simple example with three flights and three orders, in Considering inverse objective function as a fitness value, the greater
which a dummy order is added to balance the allocation matrix fitness value a solution has, the more chance it has to be selected.
(see Figs. 6 and 7).
Since in Northwest Corner Method, cost does not have any roll 3.4. GA operators
in generating the initial solution, so it is directly applied in our
solution algorithm. But this method produces just one initial solu- 3.4.1. Reproduction
tion and to complete the initial generation the mutation operator With more probability, better parents can generate better off-
(explained in Section 3.4.3) is used to generate different solutions, spring, so it would be necessary to transfer the best solutions of
up to the number of specified population size. each generation to the next one. Therefore chromosomes with
higher fitness values are more desirable, so the pr% of the chromo-
somes with the greater fitness values are automatically copied to
3.2.2. Initial procedures used in production scheduling the next generation (elite strategy).
We use five initial procedures in our work; SPT, LPT, EDD, EMD,
and also generating randomly. In SPT and LPT, a table is con- 3.4.2. Crossover
structed to list the jobs which are arranged in shortest and longest Crossover operates on two chromosomes at a time and gener-
processing time order, respectively. In EDD, jobs are sorted on the ates offspring by combining both chromosomes’ features. The pur-
basis of earliest due date. In EMD, arranging the jobs is based on pose is to generate ‘better’ offspring, i.e. to create better sequences
maximum departure time, and jobs are listed in descending way. after combining the parents. As we assigned pr% of the chromo-
Because each order’s destination is different, and has a different somes of generation to reproduction, the (1  pr)% remaining chro-
transportation time, arranging with EMD method is not similar mosomes are generated through crossover operator.
to EDD. For more details we consider the following example: Because our proposed model, considers two sections; air trans-
Assume that we have six orders, each of which have different portation and production scheduling, we specified a crossover
due dates and transportation times (Table 3). As it is obvious, operator for each one:
arranging these orders with EMD and EDD is different.
3.4.2.1. Crossover operator used in air transportation. We explain the
Orders algorithm of the operator presented by Vignaux and Michalewicz
1 2 3 Capacity
Flights (1991) in a nutshell. For more details the reader can see Gen and
10 10 10
1 400
Table 3
5 5 5
2 300 Essential parameters for the example with six orders.

Orders 1 2 3 4 5 6
10 10 10
3 200 Processing times 3 1 2 4 1 3
Due dates 18 15 10 13 11 17
Quantity 200 100 300
Transportation times 4 2 3 1 5 1
Maximum departure times 14 13 7 12 6 16
Fig. 6. Unbalanced transportation allocation matrix.
M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266 8261

Cheng (1997), Michalewicz, Vignaux, and Hobbs (1991), Vignaux Parent 1: 7 6 5 3 1 2


and Michalewicz (1991).

Step 1: Selecting two parents x1 + x2, using Roulette-Wheel Offspring 7 6 5 2 8 4


selection mechanism.
Step 2: Create two temporary matrices D and R, as follows:
h i
Parent 1: 2 7 6 8 5 4
dij ¼ x1ij þ x2ij =2
Fig. 9. One point crossover operator (1PX).
 
r ij ¼ x1ij þ x2ij mod 2

Step 3: Divide matrix R into two matrices, R1 and R2 such that: tioned earlier about crossover operator, we need to use two
mutation operators.
R ¼ R1 þ R2
X n Xn
1X n
3.4.3.1. Mutation operator used in air transportation. Assigning a
r 1ij ¼ r 2ij ¼ r ij ; i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; F predefined number for both rows (p) and columns (q) in each de-
j¼1 j¼1
2 j¼1
signed problem, we select as many rows and columns as the spec-
X
F X
F
1X F
ified numbers randomly. According to Vignaux and Michalewicz
r 1ij ¼ r 2ij ¼ r ij ; j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n
i¼1 i¼1
2 i¼1 (1991) the following algorithm is presented:

Step 4: Then generate two offspring, X 01 and X 02 , as follows: Step 1: Make a submatrix from a parent matrix using prede-
fined numbers of p (2 < p < F  1) and q (2 < q < n  1). Ran-
X 01 ¼ D þ R1
domly select {i1, . . . , ip} rows and {j1, . . . , jq} columns to create a
X 02 ¼ D þ R2 (p  q) submatrix.
Step 2: Copy the value of the element in the crossing position of
In order to elaborate the upcoming algorithm obviously, we design
selected row i and column j from the parent matrix to the same
the following example as shown in Fig. 8:
position in the new created submatrix.
Step 3: Reallocate the values of the elements of the submatrix
randomly in such a way that the sum of each row and column
3.4.2.2. Crossover operator used in production scheduling. In this
remain identical to the one before reallocation.
operator, one point is randomly selected to divide both selected
Step 4: Replace the respective elements of the parent matrix
parents into two separate parts. If n is the number of genes in a
with new elements from the reallocated submatrix.
chromosome, there are (n  1) crossover points. One of these
points is selected with equal probability. The jobs on one side (each
In Fig. 10, we specified two random rows (3 and 4) and columns
side is chosen with the same probability) of a parent are inherited
(1 and 3) to generate submatrix.
by the offspring, and the other side’s jobs are placed in the order
they appeared in the other parent (Murata & Ishibuchi, 1994). After
changing the roles of parents, the same procedure is applied to pro- 3.4.3.2. Mutation operator used in production scheduling. We choose
duce the second offspring. This crossover is illustrated in Fig. 9. ‘‘swap” operator for this section. In this operator, two genes are se-
lected randomly and are swapped. The example of this operator is
shown in Fig. 11.
3.4.3. Mutation
The mutation operator is used to rearrange the structure of a
chromosome and to slightly change the sequence, i.e. generating 4. Experimental design
a new but similar sequence. The main purpose of applying muta-
tion is to avoid convergence to a local optimum and diversify the 4.1. Taguchi parameter design
population. The mutation operator can also be considered as a sim-
ple form of a local search. The probability of mutating an offspring The effectiveness of genetic algorithms greatly depends on the
is called the probability of mutation, pm, which is usually a small correct choice of parameters (Naderi, Zandieh, & Fatemi Ghomi,
number. After generating an offspring by a crossover operator, a 2008). In this section, we study the behavior of the different
random number from uniform [0, 1] is dedicated to the offspring. parameters of the proposed GAs. The full factorial design, which
If this random number was less than or equal to pm, then the muta- tests all possible combinations of factors, is the method widely
tion operator would be performed on that offspring. As we men- used in the most researches (Al-Aomar & Al-Okaily, 2006; Kim,

X1 R1 X'1
8 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 5 0 1 3
0 7 1 0 D R 0 1 0 0 0 6 1 1
0 0 7 0 4 0 1 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 6 0
0 0 0 9 0 5 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 2 3 0 5
X2 1 0 5 0 0 1 1 0 R2 X'2
1 0 3 5 2 1 0 5 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 4 1 2 2
0 4 1 3 0 0 0 1 0 5 1 2
2 1 4 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 5 0
5 3 0 1 1 0 0 0 3 1 0 5

Fig. 8. Generating two offspring from two parents.


8262 M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266

Before Mutation After Mutation


1 0 3 5 7 4 7 4 1 0 3 5
0 4 1 3 p 6 2 4 Reallocate randomly 6 3 3 Replace 0 4 1 3
2 1 4 0 q 5 5 0 5 4 1 3 1 3 0
5 3 0 1 4 3 1 1

Fig. 10. Mutation operator for transportation.

Table 4
5 2 6 1 3 4 Factors and their levels.

Factors GA1 GA2 Levels


5 2 3 1 6 4 symbols symbols

Fig. 11. Mutation operator for production. Initial solution of A A A (1)-Random


transportation A (2)-Modified
least-cost
A (3)-Northwest
Kim, & Jang, 2003; Kolischa & Padman, 2001; Naderi et al., 2008).
But when the number of factors significantly increases, it does Population size of B B B (1)-30
transportation B (2)-35
not seem to be effective. As it would be explained clearly later, B (3)-40
there are two proposed GAs, 45 test problems, eight 3 level factors
Reproduction percentage of C C C (1)-30%
and one 5 level factor in our case each of which should be run three transportation C (2)-40%
times. Hence, the total number of running the problem is C (3)-50%
2  9  3^8  5^1  3, that is equal to 1,771,470. In this occasion, Mutation probability of D D D (1)-0.1
to be economic, several experimental designs have been suggested transportation D (2)-0.2
to reduce the number of experiments (Al-Aomar, 2006). Among D (3)-0.3
several experimental design techniques, the Taguchi method has Population size of production E E E (1)-15
been successfully applied for a systematic approach for optimiza- E (2)-20
tion (Phadke, 1989; Taguchi, 1986). The Taguchi method uses an E (3)-25

orthogonal array to organize the experimental results. Reproduction percentage of F F F (1)-10%


In the mid 1980s, Japanese quality consultant Genichi Taguchi production F (2)-20%
F (3)-30%
popularized a cost-efficient approach, known as robust parameter
design. He postulated that there are two types of factors which Mutation probability of G G G (1)-0.05
production G (2)-0.1
operate on a process: control factors and noise factors. Taguchi di-
G (3)-0.15
vides the factors into two basic clusters: controllable and noise fac-
Time percentage of H – H (1)-40%
tors (uncontrollable). Due to unpractical and often impossible
transportation (in GA1) H (2)-50%
omission of the noise factors, the Taguchi tends to both minimize H (3)-60%
the impact of noise and also find the best level of the influential
Constant coefficient (in GA2) – H H (1)-30
controllable factors on the basis of robustness (Naderi et al., H (2)-40
2009; Tsai, Ho, Liu, & Chou, 2007). Moreover, Taguchi determines H (3)-50
the relative importance of each factor with respect to its main im-
pacts on the performance of the algorithm. A transformation of the Initial solution of production I I I (1)-Random
repetition data to another value which is the measure of variation I (2)-EDD
I (3)-EMD
is developed by Taguchi. The transformation is the signal-to-noise
I (4)-SPT
(S/N) ratio, which explains why this type of parameter design is I (5)-LPT
called a robust design (Al-Aomar, 2006; Naderi et al., 2009; Phadke,
1989). Here, the term ‘signal’ denotes the desirable value (response
variable) and ‘noise’ denotes the undesirable value (standard devi-
ation). So the S/N ratio indicates the amount of variation present in The selected orthogonal array should be able to accommodate
the response variable. The aim is to maximize the signal-to-noise the factor level combinations in the experiment. Considering this,
ratio. In the Taguchi method, the S/N ratio of the minimization L27 (3^9, 9^1) is an appropriate array that satisfies these condi-
objectives is as such (Phadke, 1989; Naderi et al., 2009): tions. As there are eight 3-level factors in our work, according to
2 Taguchi experimental design procedure (Yang & El-Haik, 2003)
S=N ratio ¼ 10log10 ðobjectivefunctionÞ
we can keep one column empty. Additionally, since there is a factor
About nine control factors, eight of them are in common in both of with five levels and this scheme offers a factor with nine levels, we
the GAs and one is different. The other factor in GA1 is transporta- should adjust this array to the problem by means of adjustment
tion time percentage (which is supplemented by production time techniques (Park, 1995). Using the dummy level technique we con-
percentage) and in GA2 is number of iterations in production sche- vert a nine-level column into a five-level column. To assign the
dule’s GA. These factors and their levels are illustrated in Table 4. five-level factor to the nine-level column from the orthogonal array
On the other hand, to select the appropriate orthogonal array it L27 (3^9, 9^1), some of these levels are required to be replicated
is necessary to calculate the total degree of freedom. The proper ar- twice. In this research, second, third, fourth and fifth levels are cho-
ray should contain a degree of freedom for the total mean, two de- sen to be replicated twice. It is essential to notice that, after apply-
grees of freedom for each factor with three levels (2  8 = 16) and ing these techniques, the obtained array remains orthogonal.
four degrees of freedom for the only factor with five levels. Thus, Furthermore, the accuracy of these levels that are replicated twice
the sum of the required degrees of freedom is 1 + 2  8 + 4 = 21. is twice the accuracy of the other level. Table 5 shows the orthog-
Therefore, the appropriate array must have at least 21 rows. onal array L27 (3^9, 9^1), where control factors are assigned to the
M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266 8263

Table 5 mined by the number of jobs, the corresponding number of flights,


The modified orthogonal array L27. and the number of destinations. The value of N is set equal to 5F for
Trial A B C D E F G H I each problem. The destination for each order and each ordinary
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 flight is generated from uniform distribution between 1 to the
2 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 2 number of destinations of the corresponding problem configura-
3 1 1 1 3 3 3 2 2 3 tion. Nine different problem sizes are considered for experimental
4 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 4 study.
5 1 2 3 2 3 1 3 1 5
6 1 2 3 3 1 2 2 3 2
Departure time of each ordinary flight is generated from uni-
7 1 3 2 1 3 2 1 3 3 form distribution subject to its destination. The total number of
8 1 3 2 2 1 3 3 2 4 flights that have the same destination is denoted by TFk. The cor-
9 1 3 2 3 2 1 2 1 5 responding flights are assigned to an ordinary flight number FNf,
10 2 1 3 1 3 2 3 2 5
which starts from 1 to TFk. Each flight’s departure time is then
11 2 1 3 2 1 3 2 1 3
12 2 1 3 3 2 1 1 3 4 generated using uniform distribution from [24  (FNf  1)/
13 2 2 2 1 1 1 3 3 3 TFk, 24  FNf/TFk]. Each flight’s transportation time is given and
14 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 set to be the value of its destination number. The planning period
15 2 2 2 3 3 3 1 1 2 is set to 24 h for the nine test problem sets. Orders due date is
16 2 3 1 1 2 3 3 1 2
drawn from uniform distribution. The earliest delivery time of
17 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4
18 2 3 1 3 1 2 1 2 5 an order is the sum of processing time of the order and air trans-
19 3 1 2 1 2 3 2 3 5 portation time. Therefore, the range for an order’s due date is be-
20 3 1 2 2 3 1 1 2 2 tween Qi  pi + ti and 6(Qi  pi + ti), where Qi  pi is the order’s
21 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 4
processing time and ti is the air transportation time to its destina-
22 3 2 1 1 3 2 2 1 4
23 3 2 1 2 1 3 1 3 5 tion. Initially, a number is specified to every unit of each order as
24 3 2 1 3 2 1 3 2 3 processing time, using uniform [0.5, 1.5]. Due to 24 h planning
25 3 3 3 1 1 1 2 2 2 period, problem’s size and orders quantity producing all of orders
26 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 3 might be impossible because total processing time of entire or-
27 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 1
ders must be less than 24 h. Therefore the upcoming method is
acquired to modify the initial processing times. Assuming that
the plant is able to produce 1.2–2 times of the total orders quan-
columns of the orthogonal array and the corresponding integers in tity in the planning period (Li et al., 2008), a random number be-
these columns indicate the actual levels of these factors. tween 1.2 and 2 is generated which indicates the plant’s
production capacity to produce orders totally. Then the process-
4.2. Data generation ing time adjustment rate is calculated as:
X 
In order to evaluate the performance of the existing algorithm k¼ Q i p0i  uniform½1:2; 2=24
based on two GAs developed in this research for solving the prob-
lem, a plan is utilized to generate test data. Table 6 shows the At the end, each initial processing time ðp0i Þ is transformed to mod-
experimental design. ified processing time (pi) using k.
The data required for the problem include the number of jobs,
flights and destinations. The values of common parameters are 4.3. Parameter tuning
used from Li et al. (2008). The number of jobs N ranges from 20
to 100, the number of flights F ranges from 4 to 20, and the number Nine test problems, with different sizes, are solved to evaluate
of destinations K ranges from 2 to 5. The problem size is deter- the performance of the presented algorithm. The experiments on

Table 6
Experimental design used in random problems generation.

Problem parameter No. of classes Values


Number of orders (N) 9 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100
Number of flights (F) 9 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20
Number of destinations (K) 4 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5
Order quantity ðQ i Þ 1 Uniform [50, 200]
Order due date ðdi Þ 1 Uniform [1, 6] * (Qi * pi + ti)
Order delivery earliness penalty cost ðai Þ 1 Uniform [3, 5]
Order departure time earliness penalty cost ða0i Þ 1 Uniform [3, 5]
Order delivery tardiness penalty cost ðbi Þ 1 Uniform [5, 8]
Order destination (Desi) 1 Uniform [1, K]
Ordinary flight destination (desf) 1 Uniform [1, K]
Ordinary flight departure time ðDf Þ 1 Uniform [24 * (FNf  1)/TFk, 24 * FNf/TFk]
The available 1st type capacity of ordinary flight f ðCap1f Þ 1 Uniform [200, 800]
The available 2nd type capacity of ordinary flight f ðCap2f Þ 1 Uniform [100, 200]
Transportation cost of per unit product allocated to 1st type capacity of ordinary flight ðTc1f Þ 1 Uniform [60 + 20desf, 80 + 20desf]
Transportation cost of per unit product allocated to 2nd type capacity of ordinary flight ðTc2f Þ 1 Uniform [60 + 20desf, 80 + 20desf]
Transportation cost of per unit product allocated to its charter flight ðb0i Þ 1 Uniform [60 + 20desf, 80 + 20desf]
Ordinary flight arrival time ðAf Þ 1 Df + tf
Maximum departure time of charter flight for order i ðMDi Þ 1 di  ti
ðp0i Þ 1 Uniform [0.5, 1.5]
P
k 1 k ¼ ð Q i p0i Þ  uniform½1:2; 2=24
The unit product processing time of order i ðpi Þ 1 pi ¼ p0i =k
8264 M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266

the GAs were based on the L27 orthogonal array, therefore 27 dif- the mean RPD is calculated for each trial. To do according Taguchi
ferent combinations of control factors were considered. Due to parameter design instructions, these mean RPDs, are transformed
having stochastic nature of GAs, three replications were performed to S/N ratios. The S/N ratios of trials are averaged in each level
for each trial to achieve the more reliable results. We implement and the value is shown in Fig. 12. As shown in Fig. 12, in GA1, best
the algorithms in C++, and run on a PC with 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 parameters of factors A, B, E, G, and H are obviously 2, 2, 3, 3, and 3,
Duo and 1 GB of RAM memory. Because the scale of objective func- respectively. But, determining best parameters of other factors
tions in each instance is different, they could not be used directly. needs more investigations. Thus, in addition to S/N ratios, another
To solve this problem, the relative percentage deviation (RPD) is measurement, the RPD, is used. The results of RPD for each
used for each instance. parameter level are demonstrated in Fig. 13. As can be seen in
Fig. 13, the RPD illustrates the best parameters of factors C, D, F
Algsol  Minsol and I as 2, 2, 1, and 3, respectively which confirms the same results
RPD ¼  100
Minsol as S/N ratios.
where Algsol and Minsol are the obtained objective value for each Similar to GA1, considering Figs. 14 and 15, all the best param-
replication of trial in a given instance and the obtained best solu- eters for GA2 are defined as 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1 and 3, respectively,
tion, respectively. After converting the objective values to RPDs, according to their alphabetical order.

-14.5
-15
-15.5
-16
S/N

-16.5
-17
-17.5
-18
A B C D E F G H I

Fig. 12. Mean S/N ratio plot for each level of the factors in GA1.

8.1
7.7
7.3
6.9
RPD

6.5
6.1
5.7
5.3
A B C D E F G H I

Fig. 13. Mean RPD plot for each level of the factors in GA1.

-14.6

-14.9

-15.2

-15.5
S/N

-15.8

-16.1

-16.4

-16.7
A B C D E F G H I

Fig. 14. Mean S/N ratio plot for each level of the factors in GA2.
M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266 8265

6.8

6.6

6.4

6.2
RPD

5.8

5.6

5.4
A B C D E F G H I

Fig. 15. Mean RPD plot for each level of the factors in GA2.

Table 7
Average relative percentage deviation (RPD) for the algorithms.

Algorithms 20j4f2d 30j6f2d 40j8f3d 50j10f3d 60j12f3d 70j14f4d 80j16f4d 90j18f4d 100j20f5d Average
GA1 5.15 4.07 4.25 4.87 4.93 6.74 5.56 6.92 6.26 5.41
GA2 1.25 1.34 0.86 0.6 0.43 0.72 0.44 0.62 0.33 0.73

8
7
6
5 GA1
RPD

4 GA2
3
2
1
0
20j4f2d

30j6f2d

40j8f3d

50j10f3d

60j12f3d

70j14f4d

80j16f4d

90j18f4d

100j20f5d
Fig. 17. Means plot for the interaction between each algorithm and problem size.
Fig. 16. Means plot and LSD intervals for the algorithms.

lems. As it is obvious, GA2 exhibits robust performance, meanwhile


4.4. Experimental results the problems size increases. It also shows remarkable performance
improvements of GA2 in large size problems versus GA1.
In order to be fair, searching time is set identical for both algo-
rithms which is equal to 2  n  F milliseconds. This criterion is
sensitive to both problem sizes, n and F. Using this stopping crite- 5. Conclusion and future works
rion, searching time increases according to the rise of either num-
ber of jobs or number of flights. We generate five instances for each In this paper, after clarifying the production–distribution prob-
of the nine problem sizes, i.e. totally 45 instances, different from lem and representing the mathematical model, we describe how to
the ones used for calibration, to avoid bias in the results. Each in- incorporate transportation allocation and production schedule into
stance is solved three times. We use RPD measure to compare genetic algorithm approach. In the first proposed algorithm (GA1),
the algorithms. Table 7 shows the results of the experiments for we devote a portion of the search time to seek for the best trans-
each problem size, 15 data per average. The best performance is portation allocation and dedicate the remaining time to search
obtained by GA2 with the RPD of 0.73. In order to verify the statis- for the best production–transportation solution. But, in the another
tical validity of the results, we have performed an analysis of var- proposed algorithm (GA2), we allocate some definite number of
iance (ANOVA) to accurately analyze the results. The results generations to search for the best production–transportation solu-
demonstrate that there is a clear statistically significant difference tion only after finding a better solution in each generation of trans-
between performances of the algorithms. The means plot and LSD portation. To adjust the parameters of the proposed genetic
intervals (at the 95% confidence level) for two algorithms are algorithms, the Taguchi parameter design method was employed.
shown in Fig. 16. In order to evaluate the robustness of the algo- Applying this method, the research cut down the original gigantic
rithms in different situations, we analyzed the effects of the prob- experiment combinations that originally have eight factors with
lem size on the performance of both GAs. Fig. 17 shows the each containing three levels and one factor with five levels to re-
interaction between the quality of the GAs and the size of prob- duced form with only 27 levels (due to Taguchi standard L27
8266 M. Rostamian Delavar et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 8255–8266

orthogonal array). Thus, total number of experiments with two ge- Li, H., Hendry, L., & Teunter, R. (2007). A strategic capacity allocation model for a
complex supply chain: Formulation and solution approach comparison.
netic algorithms, nine different problem sizes and three replica-
International Journal of Production Economics. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2007.02.033.
tions, i.e. 2  9  3  3^8  5^1 = 1771470, was reduced to 2  Li, K. P., Ganesan, V. K., & Sivakumar, A. I. (2005). Synchronized scheduling of
9  3  27 = 1458 experiments. Setting the parameters on the opti- assembly and multi-destination air transportation in a consumer electronics
mal values, the proposed genetic algorithms are compared to- supply chain. International Journal of Production Research, 43, 2671–2685.
Li, K. P., Ganesan, V. K., & Sivakumar, A. I. (2006a). Scheduling of single stage
gether. As a result, GA2 generates better solutions than GA1. We assembly with air transportation in a consumer electronic supply chain.
examine the behaviors of the algorithms within the several prob- Computers and Industrial Engineering, 51, 264–278.
lem sizes, and the results have shown that when the problem size Li, K. P., Ganesan, V. K., & Sivakumar, A. I. (2006b). Methodologies for synchronized
scheduling of assembly and air transportation in a consumer electronic supply
increases, GA2 represents better results and also keeps its robust chain. International Journal of Logistic System Management, 2, 52–67.
performance. Li, K. P., Sivakumar, A. I., Fu, Q., & Jin, X. (2007). A case study for synchronized
There are potentially unlimited opportunities for research in scheduling and manufacturing and air transportation in consumer electronics
supply chain. In IEEE conference on industrial engineering and engineering
coordinated production and air transportation scheduling. For fu- management (IEEM) Singapore (pp. 1629–1633).
ture researches, it is possible to investigate and develop new algo- Li, K. P., Sivakumar, A. I., & Ganesan, V. K. (2008). Complexities and algorithms for
rithms based on other metaheuristics such as Tabu Search, synchronized scheduling of parallel machine assembly and air transportation in
consumer electronic supply chain. European Journal of Operational Research, 187,
Simulated Annealing, Variable Neighborhood Search, Scatter 442–455.
Search, and Ant Colonies. Furthermore, we may take into account Li, K. P., Sivakumar, A. I., Mathirajan, M., & Ganesan, V. K. (2004). Solution
more realistic aspects of the problem such as dynamic environ- methodology for synchronizing assembly manufacturing and air transportation
of consumer electronics supply chain. International Journal of Business, 9,
ment and stochastic demands.
361–380.
M’Hallah, Rym (2007). Minimizing total earliness and tardiness on a single machine
using a hybrid heuristic. Computers and Operations Research, 34, 3126–3142.
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