22 search hits
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The Integrated Size and Price Optimization problem
(2012)
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Miriam Kießling
Sascha Kurz
Jörg Rambau
- We present the Integrated Size and Price Optimization Problem (ISPO)
for a fashion discounter with many branches. Based on a two-stage
stochastic programming model with recourse, we develop an exact
algorithm and a production-compliant heuristic that produces small
optimality gaps. In a field study we show that a distribution of
supply over branches and sizes based on ISPO solutions is
significantly better than a one-stage optimization of the
distribution ignoring the possibility of optimal pricing.
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An exact column-generation approach for the lot-type design problem
(2012)
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Sascha Kurz
Miriam Kießling
Jörg Rambau
- We consider a fashion discounter distributing its many branches with
integral multiples from a set of available lot-types. For the problem of
approximating the branch and size dependent demand using those lots
we propose a tailored exact column generation approach assisted by fast
algorithms for intrinsic subproblems, which turns out to be very efficient
on our real-world instances.
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A survey of the higher Stasheff-Tamari orders
(2012)
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Jörg Rambau
Victor Reiner
- The Tamari lattice, thought as a poset on the set of triangulations of a convex polygon with n vertices, generalizes to the higher Stasheff-Tamari orders on the set of triangulations of a cyclic d-dimensional polytope having n vertices. This survey discusses what is known about these orders, and what one would like to know about them.
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The Stochastic Guaranteed Service Model with Recourse for Multi-Echelon Warehouse Management
(2012)
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Jörg Rambau
Konrad Schade
- The Guaranteed Service Model (GSM) computes optimal order-points in multi-echelon inventory control under the assumptions that delivery times can be guaranteed and the demand is bounded. Our new Stochastic Guaranteed Service Model (SGSM) with Recourse covers also scenarios that violate these assumptions. Simulation experiments on real-world data of a large German car manufacturer show that policies based on the SGSM dominate GSM-policies.
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Stability with uniform bounds for online dial-a-ride problems under reasonable load
(2011)
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Sven O. Krumke
Jörg Rambau
- In continuously running logistic systems (like in-house pallet transportation systems), finite buffer capacities usually require controls achieving uniformly bounded waiting queues (strong stability). Standard stochastic traffic assumptions (arrival rates below service rates) can, in general, not guarantee these strong stability requirements, no matter which control. Therefore, the worst-case traffic notion of reasonable load was introduced, originally for the analysis of the Online-Dial-a-Ride Problem. A set of requests is reasonable if the requests that are presented in a sufficiently large time period can be served in a time period of at most the same length. The rationale behind this concept is that the occurrence of non-reasonable request sets renders the system overloaded, and capacity should be extended. For reasonable load, there are control policies that can guarantee uniformly bounded flow times, leading to strong stability in many cases. Control policies based on naive eoptimization, however, can in general achieve neither bounded flow times nor strong ability. In this chapter, we review the concept and examples for reasonable load. Moreover, we present new control policies achieving strong stability as well as new elementary examples of request sets where naive reoptimization fails.
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Local Approximation of Discounted Markov Decision Problems by Mathematical Programming Methods
(2011)
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Stefan Heinz
Jörg Rambau
Andreas Tuchscherer
- We develop a method to approximate the value vector of discounted Markov decision problems (MDP) with guaranteed error bounds. It is based on the linear programming characterization of the optimal expected cost. The new idea is to use column generation to dynamically generate only such states that are most relevant for the bounds by incorporating the reduced cost information. The number of states that is sufficient in general and necessary in the worst case to prove such bounds is independent of the cardinality of the state space. Still, in many instances, the column generation algorithm can prove bounds using much fewer states. In this paper, we explain the foundations of the method. Moreover, the method is used to improve the well-known nearest-neighbor policy for the elevator control problem.
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A generalized job-shop problem with more than one resource demand per task
(2011)
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Joachim Schauer
Cornelius Schwarz
- We study a generalized job-shop problem called the Laser Sharing Problem with fixed tours (LSP-T) where the tasks may need more than one resource simultaneously. This fact will be used to model possible collisions between industrial robots. For three robots we will show that the special case where only one resource is used by more than one robot is already NP-hard. This also implies that one machine scheduling with chained min delay precedence constraints is NP-hard for at least three chains. On the positive side, we present a polynomial algorithm for the two robot case and a pseudo-polynomial algorithm together with an FPTAS for an arbitrary but constant number of robots. This gives a sharp boundary of the complexity status for a constant number of robots.
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How to avoid collisions in scheduling industrial robots?
(2010)
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Jörg Rambau
Cornelius Schwarz
- In modern production facilities industrial robots play an important role. When two ore more of them are moving in the same area, care must be taken to avoid collisions between them. Due to expensive equipment costs our approach to handle this is very conservative: Each critical area is modeled as a shared resource where only one robot is allowed to use it at a time. We studied collision avoidance in the context of arc welding robots in car manufacture industry. Here another shared resource comes into place. When using laser welding technology every robot needs to be connected to a laser source supplying it with the necessary energy. Each laser source can be connected to up to six robots but serve only one at a time. An instance of the problem consists of a set of robots, a set of welding task, a number of laser sources, a distance table, collision information and a production cycle time. The goal is to design robot tours covering all task and schedule them resource conflict free such that the makespan does not exceed the cycle time. We propose a general model for integrated routing and scheduling including collision avoidance as well as a branch-and-bound algorithm for it. Computational results on data generated with the robot simulation software KuKa Sim Pro are also provided showing that our algorithm outperforms standard mixed-integer models for our application.
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Bounds for the minimum oriented diameter
(2008)
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Sascha Kurz
Martin Lätsch
- We consider the problem of finding an orientation with minimum diameter of a connected bridgeless graph. Fomin et. al. discovered a relation between the minimum oriented diameter an the size of a minimal dominating set. We improve their upper bound.
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Integral point sets over Z_n^m
(2007)
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Axel Kohnert
Sascha Kurz
- There are many papers studying properties of point sets in the Euclidean space or on integer grids, with pairwise integral or rational distances. In this article we consider the distances or coordinates of the point sets which instead of being integers are elements of Z_n, and study the properties of the resulting combinatorial structures.
