Massimiliano Caramia - Böcker

Manufacturing systems, regardless of their size, have to work with scarce resources in dynamic environments. Managers are asked to assign production facilities to parallel activities, respecting operational constraints and deadlines while keeping resource costs low. Classic scheduling approaches are not adequate when (i) a task simultaneously requires a set of different resources and (ii) a trade-off between different objectives (like time, cost and workload balance) should be reached. Thus, more sophisticated models and algorithms. This book aims to provide robust methods for achieving effective resource allocation and to solve related problems that occur daily and often generate cost overruns, specifically focusing on problems like resource levelling, sizing of machines and production layouts, cost optimization in production planning and scheduling. This approach is based on providing quantitative methods, covering both mathematical programming and algorithms, leading to high quality solutions for the analysed problems.Details of extensive experimentation is provided for the proposed techniques to put them in a practical perspective, so that, on the one hand, the reader can reproduce them, and, on the other hand, it appears clear how they can be implemented in real scenarios. This book will be a valuable resource for postgraduate students studying business, engineering or computer science. It will also be of interest to researchers in the fore-mentioned areas.

Manufacturing systems work with scarce resources in dynamic environments. Managers need to assign production facilities to parallel activities, respecting operational constraints and deadlines while keeping costs low. Old scheduling approaches are inadequate when a task both requires a set of different resources and a trade-off between objectives. More sophisticated models and algorithms are needed by these managers. This book provides robust methods for achieving effective resource allocation. It also solves problems such as resource levelling, sizing of machines and production layouts, cost optimization in production planning and scheduling that occur daily and often generate cost overruns. The quantitative methods used cover both mathematical programming and algorithms, leading to high quality solutions. Details of experimentation put these techniques in a practical perspective.This book is a valuable resource for postgraduate students and researchers in business, engineering or computer science.

The second edition of Multi-Objective Management in Freight Logistics builds upon the first, providing a detailed study of freight transportation systems, with a specific focus on multi-objective modelling.