Lot streaming is a technique of splitting production lots into smaller sublots in a multi-stage
manufacturing systems so that operations of a given lot can be overlapped. This technique can
reduce manufacturing makespan and is an effective tool for time-based manufacturing strategy.
Several research articles appeared in literature to solve this problem and most of these studies
are limited to pure flowshop environments where there is only a single machine in each stage.
On the other hand, because of the applicability of hybrid flowshops in different manufacturing
settings, the scheduling of these types of shops is also extensively studied by several authors.
However, the issue of lot streaming in hybrid flowshop environment is not well studied. In this
paper, we aim to initiate research in bridging the gap between the research efforts in flowshop
lot streaming and hybrid flowshop scheduling. We present a comprehensive mathematical
model for scheduling flexible hybrid flowshop with lot streaming. Numerical example
demonstrated that lot streaming can result in larger makespan reduction in hybrid flowshop
where there is a limited research than in pure flowshop where research is abundant.

Job shop scheduling (JSS) problem has been one of the most interesting research issues
in the literature during the recent years. JSS problem has been studied in different forms
of deterministic, fuzzy, and stochastic at different depths. The idea of robust
optimization (ROP), on the other hand, has earned a particular value to become a
popular subject of the breakthrough for problem solving affairs amongst the researchers.
Based on the emerged opportunity for illustrating a new area of search, a robust JSS
problem is proposed as a challenge to this boundary of knowledge. The proposed
method is capable of handling the perturbation which exists amongst the processing
times. In fact, in many real world job scheduling problems, a small change in the
processing times, not only causes a non-optimal solution, but also the infeasibility of the
final solution may also occur. The proposed robust method could guarantee that, a small
deviation of the processing times does not affect the feasibility. The implementation of
the proposed method is illustrated using some numerical examples and the outcomes of
the investigation are discussed

This paper presents an order level inventory system with time
dependent Weibull deterioration and ramp type demand rate where
production and demand are time dependent. The proposed model of this
paper considers economic order quantity under two different cases. The
implementation of the proposed model is illustrated using some
numerical examples. Sensitivity analysis is performed to show the
effect of changes in the parameters on the optimum solution.

In this paper, we consider a multi-period integrated supplier selection and order lot
sizing problem where a single buyer plans to purchase a single product in multiple
periods from several qualified suppliers who are able to provide the required product
with the needed quality in a timely manner. Product price and order cost differs
among different suppliers. Buyer’s demand for the product is deterministic and varies
for different time periods. The problem is to determine how much product from which
supplier must be ordered in each period such that buyer’s demand is satisfied without
violating some side constraints. We have developed a mathematical programming
model to deal with this problem, and proposed a forward dynamic programming
approach to obtain optimal solutions in reasonable amount of time even for large scale
problems. Finally, a numerical example is conducted in which solutions obtained from
the proposed dynamic programming algorithm is compared with solutions from the
branch-and-bound algorithm. Through the numerical example we have shown the
efficiency of our algorithm.

Assembly line balancing problem is an approach of assigning a set of tasks to an ordered
sequence of workstations. This assignment needs to be made in such a way that the
underlying precedence constraints are not violated and efficiency measures are optimized
subject to the restriction of the cycle time constraint. Research works, reported so far, mainly
deal with the minimization of balancing loss, subject to precedence constraints. Lack of
uniqueness in those optimum solutions and pressing demand to include system loss in the
objective function have led to the present work of minimization of both balancing and system
loss. As there is no standard measure for system loss, the current work proposes a measure
for system loss and offers solution to this bi-objective problem.

One of the important factors for the success of a bank industry is to monitor their customers & apos;
behavior and their point-of-sale (POS). The bank needs to know its merchants & apos; behavior to find
interesting ones to attract more transactions which results in the growth of its income and
assets. The recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) analysis is a famous approach for
extracting behavior of customers and is a basis for marketing and customer relationship
management (CRM), but it is not aligned enough for banking context. Introducing RF*M* in
this article results in a better understanding of groups of merchants. Another artifact of RF*M*
is RF*M* scoring which is applied in two ways, preprocessing the POSs and assigning
behavioral meaningful labels to the merchants’ segments. The class labels and the RF*M*
parameters are entered into a rule-based classification algorithm to achieve descriptive rules of
the clusters. These descriptive rules outlined the boundaries of RF*M* parameters for each
cluster. Since the rules are generated by a classification algorithm, they can also be applied for
predicting the behavioral label and scoring of the upcoming POSs. These rules are called
behavioral rules.

In this paper, a single item deterministic inventory model with two separate warehouses called
owned warehouse/show-room (OW) and rented warehouse (RW) is developed. The proposed
model of this paper also considers a realistic assumption regarding the storage capacity of the
rented warehouse. Demand is a function of selling price, advertisement of an item and
displayed inventory level in OW. The stocks of RW are shipped to OW under bulk release
pattern where shortages are not allowed. We discuss different scenarios of the proposed model
to address relative size of stock dependency parameters and the capacity of owned warehouse.
For each scenario, the corresponding problem is formulated as a constrained mixed integer
nonlinear programming problem with three integer and two non-integer variables and a real
coded genetic algorithm (RCGA) is developed to solve the resulted problem. The proposed
model of the paper is also examined using some numerical examples and sensitivity analysis is
performed.

The permutation method of multiple attribute decision making has two significant deficiencies:
high computational time and wrong priority output in some problem instances. In this paper, a
novel permutation method called adjusted permutation method (APM) is proposed to
compensate deficiencies of conventional permutation method. We propose Tabu search (TS)
and particle swarm optimization (PSO) to find suitable solutions at a reasonable computational
time for large problem instances. The proposed method is examined using some numerical
examples to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The preliminary results show
that both approaches provide competent solutions in relatively reasonable amounts of time
while TS performs better to solve APM.

The ordering strategy for a single period inventory model is the key to achieve success in the
competitive business environment. This article considers demand in a form of fuzzy number
and discusses the SPIM in which the retailer has the opportunity to reorder once during the
period. The entire period/season is divided into two slots and the reorder is to be made during
the mid-season after the early-season demand has been observed. The objective is to find the
expected optimal order quantity together with profit maximization. We illustrate the
implementation of the proposed model using a numerical example and explain that the explicit
consideration of this reordering opportunity could lead us to better results in terms of
profitability.

In this paper, we establish an economic production quantity (EPQ) based inventory model by
considering various types of non-perfect products. We classify products in four groups of
perfect, imperfect, defective but reworkable and non-reworkable defective items. The demand
is a power function of price and marketing expenditure and production unit cost is considered to
be a function of lot size. The objective of this paper is to determine lot size, marketing
expenditure, selling price, set up cost and inventory holding cost, simultaneously. The problem
is modeled as a nonlinear posynomial geometric programming and an optimal solution is
derived. The implementation of the proposed method is demonstrated using a numerical
example and the sensitivity analysis is also performed to study the behavior of the model.