Jan Weglarz - Böcker

Operations Research began as a field with the mathematical scheduling of a massive project--logistically supplying Europe with military equipment and goods during the 2nd World War. Today project scheduling research continues to grow in the variety of its theoretical models, in its magnitude, and in its application. As the world becomes more interrelated and complex, the wider its research is applied to an increasing number of project scheduling problems. The book surveys the current state-of-the-art in this realm of operations research with chapters written by the respective leading experts on each topic. It will cover the range of the key models in the field, including deterministic, probabilistic, single- and multi-mode, single- and multi-objective, and a general model on discrete-continuous resources. Recent solution algorithms are systematically examined. The book summarizes the current developments and theoretical achievements in the field. These new developments include project uncertainty and grid resource management. PERSPECTIVES IN MODERN PROJECT SCHEDULING systematically presents this dynamically developing area in three parts.Part I discusses new models of the project management process that are being developed.They include an alternative to the well-known PERT technique, consideration of disturbances during the project realization, introduction of new constraints like due dates or setup times, as well as a general discussion on classification of resources. Part II outlines and evaluates the new algorithms that have been developed to solve the strongly NP-hard resource constrained project scheduling efficiently with acceptable accuracy. New lower bounds for the RCPSP are proposed, followed by smart justification technique and a series of Metaheuristics. Finally, a neural network approach is introduced. Part III is devoted to new areas of applications of the project management models and the algorithms -- for example, pharmaceutical research, grid computing, factory pick-up of new cars, batch scheduling in process industries and make-to-order (project driven) manufacturing -- that have been developed to solve project scheduling problems in these application areas.The book will be of interest to academics and students in project management and scheduling in Business Schools, Operations Research/Management Science, Computer Science & Engineering, Systems Analysis, and Applied Mathematics.In addition, decision makers, consultants and practitioners in industry, government and service organizations will also be interested in this book.

The problem of allocating scarce resources over time to perform a given set of activities - that is, project scheduling - appears in the vast spectrum of real-world situations. Over the last forty years project scheduling problems have been carefully studied, resulting in a considerable body of knowledge. Recently, however, the power and ubiquity of the computer has had a pronounced effect on research in project scheduling and project scheduling models. As a result, considerable progress has been made in all directions of modeling and finding solutions to these problems. This volume is a treatment of project scheduling in general and of recent developments in particular. Part I deals with classical models. "Classical model" means the deterministic problems involving discrete resources only and the evaluation of schedules on the basis of a single criterion. This term covers a wide variety of problems, including (discrete) resource-duration interaction, that is multi-mode models. Part 2 deals with heuristic algorithms for these models.It is complemented by chapters treating such important problems as benchmark instances, interval capacity consistency tests, and the evolution of software quality for (classical) project scheduling problems. In Part 3 the most important new or "non-classical" models are considered. These include probabilistic and fuzzy models, and continuous resources as well as multi-criteria formulations and knowledge-based systems. Part 4 contains some important extensions and/or applications of the project scheduling problems considered in the previous chapters.

"Grid Resource Management: State of the Art and Future Trends" presents an overview of the state of the field and describes both the real experiences and the current research available in 2003. Grid computing is a rapidly developing and changing field, involving the shared and co-ordinated use of dynamic, multi-institutional resources. Grid resource management is the process of identifying requirements, matching resources to applications, allocating those resources, and scheduling and monitoring Grid resources over time in order to run Grid applications as efficiently as possible. While Grids have become almost commonplace, the use of good Grid resource management tools is far from ubiquitous because of the many open issues of the field, including the multiple layers of schedulers, the lack of control over resources, the fact that resources are shared, and that users and administrators have conflicting performance goals. These are the issues addressed in this book, in addition to elucidating the overlap with related areas including discussions of work with peer-to-peer computing, economic approaches, and operations research."Grid Resource Management: State of the Art and Future Trends" should be a useful resource for users, application developers, or resource owners when working with Grid resource management systems.

Operations Research began with the mathematical scheduling of a massive project—logistically supplying Europe with military equipment and goods during the WWII. Today project scheduling research continues growing in a variety of its theoretical models, in its magnitude and application. As the world becomes more interrelated and complex, the wider its research is applied to an increasing number of project scheduling problems. Project Scheduling: Surveying the State-of-the-Art surveys the current state-of-the-art in operations research with chapters written by the respective leading experts on each topic. It covers the range of the key models in the field, including deterministic, probabilistic, single- and multi-mode, single- and multi-objective, and a general model on discrete-continuous resources. Recent solution algorithms are systematical examined. The book summarize sthe current developments and theoretical achievements in the field, including project uncertainty and grid resource management.

Grid Resource Management: State of the Art and Future Trends presents an overview of the state of the field and describes both the real experiences and the current research available today. Grid computing is a rapidly developing and changing field, involving the shared and coordinated use of dynamic, multi-institutional resources. Grid resource management is the process of identifying requirements, matching resources to applications, allocating those resources, and scheduling and monitoring Grid resources over time in order to run Grid applications as efficiently as possible. While Grids have become almost commonplace, the use of good Grid resource management tools is far from ubiquitous because of the many open issues of the field, including the multiple layers of schedulers, the lack of control over resources, the fact that resources are shared, and that users and administrators have conflicting performance goals.

Project scheduling problems are, generally speaking, the problems of allocating scarce resources over time to perform a given set of activities. ), Advances in Project Scheduling, Elsevier, 1989, summarizing the state-of-the-art across project scheduling problems, was published.

This book will focus on new Remote Instrumentation aspects related to middleware architecture, high-speed networking, wireless Grid for acquisition devices and sensor networks, QoS provisioning for real-time control, measurement instrumentation and methodology.  Moreover, it will provide knowledge about the automation of mechanisms oriented to accompanying processes that are usually performed by a human. Another important point of this book is focusing on the future trends concerning Remote Instrumentation systems development and actions related to standardization of remote instrumentation mechanisms.

This book will focus on new Remote Instrumentation aspects related to middleware architecture, high-speed networking, wireless Grid for acquisition devices and sensor networks, QoS provisioning for real-time control, measurement instrumentation and methodology.  Moreover, it will provide knowledge about the automation of mechanisms oriented to accompanying processes that are usually performed by a human. Another important point of this book is focusing on the future trends concerning Remote Instrumentation systems development and actions related to standardization of remote instrumentation mechanisms.

This handbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the theory and applications of scheduling in advanced planning and computer systems. It addresses a broad audience including practitioners and researchers interested in scheduling, as well as graduate and advanced undergraduate students in the fields of computer science and computer engineering, operations research, industrial and real-time engineering, management science, business administration and information systems, and applied mathematics.The book begins by providing an introduction to and basic concepts from discrete mathematics. Single and multiple processor systems are covered, with a focus on multiprocessor tasks and hard real-time systems. Flow shop and open shop scheduling, as well as scheduling in job shops, are explained in detail. Issues like limited processor availability, time-dependence, resource constraints and imprecise computations are dealt with in dedicated chapters. Special attention is given toonline scheduling, constraint programming and disjunctive scheduling. The book also features applications and cases involving flexible manufacturing systems, computer integrated production scheduling and logistics. In particular it presents case studies on optimization procedures for the production of acrylic glass and of helicopter parts in a flexible manufacturing system, an efficient decision support system for airport gate scheduling, concrete delivery planning, and berth and quay crane allocation at seaports.

This book provides a theoretical and application oriented analysis of deterministic scheduling problems arising in computer and manufacturing environments. In such systems processors (machines) and possibly other resources are to be allocated among tasks in such a way that certain scheduling objectives are met. Various scheduling problems are discussed where different problem parameters such as task processing times, urgency weights, arrival times, deadlines, precedence constraints, and processor speed factor are involved. Polynomial and exponential time optimization algorithms as well as approximation and heuristic approaches (including tabu search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, and ejection chains) are presented and discussed. Moreover, resource-constrained, imprecise computation, flexible flow shop and dynamic job shop scheduling, as well as flexible manufacturing systems, are considered.

Let us first describe the purpose of this book, starting with the explanation of its title. In general, scheduling problems can be understood very broadly as the problems of allocating resources over time to perform a set of tasks being parts of some processes, among which computational and manufacturing ones are most important. Tasks individually compete for resources which can be of a very different nature, e.g. manpower, money, processors (machines), energy, tools. The same is true for task characteristics, e.g. ready times, due dates, relative ur­ gency weights, functions describing task processing in relation to allotted re­ sources. Moreover, a structure of a set of tasks, reflecting precedence constraints among them, can be defined in different ways. In addition, different criteria which measure the quality of the performance of a set of tasks can be taken into account. It is easy to imagine that scheduling problems understood so generally ap­ pear almost everywhere in real-world situations. Of course, there are many as­ pects concerning approaches for modeling and solving these problems which are of general methodological importance. On the other hand, however, some classes of scheduling problems have their own specificity which should be taken into ac­ count. Since it is rather impossible to treat all these classes with the same atten­ tion in a framework of one book, some constraints must be put on the subject area considered. In the case of this book these constraints are as follows.

This handbook is in a sense a continuation of Scheduling Computer and Manu­ facturing Processes [1], two editions of which have received kind acceptance of a wide readership. As the previous volume, it is the result of a long lasting Ger­ man-Polish collaboration. However, due to important reasons, it has a new form. Namely, following the suggestions of the Publisher, we decided to prepare a handbook filling out a gap on the market in the area. The gap concerns a unified approach to the most important scheduling models and methods with the special emphasis put on their relevance to practical situations. Thus, in comparison with [1], the contents has been changed significantly. This concerns not only correc­ tions we have introduced, following the suggestions made by many readers (we are very grateful to all of them) and taking into account our own experience, but first of all this means that important new material has been added. It is character­ ized in Chapter 1, and, generally speaking, covers a transition from theory to ap­ plications in a wide spectrum of scheduling problems, hidependently of this, in all chapters new results have been reported and new illustrative material, includ­ ing real-world problems, has been given. We very much hope that in this way the handbook will be of interest to a much wider readership than the former volume, the fact which has been under­ lined in the title.