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Genetic Programming for Production Scheduling

An Evolutionary Learning Approach

Authors:

  • Presents theoretical aspects and applications of genetic programming for production scheduling
  • Explores the modern and unique interfaces between operations research and machine learning
  • Offers an introduction to production scheduling for researchers

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Table of contents (16 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxiii
  2. Introduction

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
    2. Introduction

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 3-17
    3. Preliminaries

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 19-28
  3. Genetic Programming for Static Production Scheduling Problems

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-30
    2. Learning Schedule Construction Heuristics

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 31-55
    3. Learning Schedule Improvement Heuristics

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 57-66
    4. Learning to Augment Operations Research Algorithms

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 67-88
  4. Genetic Programming for Dynamic Production Scheduling Problems

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 89-90
    2. Representations with Multi-tree and Cooperative Coevolution

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 91-106
    3. Efficiency Improvement with Multi-fidelity Surrogates

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 107-126
    4. Search Space Reduction with Feature Selection

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 127-153
    5. Search Mechanism with Specialised Genetic Operators

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 155-183
  5. Genetic Programming for Multi-objective Production Scheduling Problems

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 185-185
    2. Learning Heuristics for Multi-objective Dynamic Production Scheduling Problems

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 187-210
    3. Cooperative Coevolution for Multi-objective Production Scheduling Problems

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 211-233
    4. Learning Scheduling Heuristics for Multi-objective Dynamic Flexible Job Shop Scheduling

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 235-245
  6. Multitask Genetic Programming for Production Scheduling Problems

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 247-248
    2. Multitask Learning in Hyper-Heuristic Domain with Dynamic Production Scheduling

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 249-269
    3. Adaptive Multitask Genetic Programming for Dynamic Job Shop Scheduling

      • Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang
      Pages 271-290

About this book

This book introduces readers to an evolutionary learning approach, specifically genetic programming (GP), for production scheduling. The book is divided into six parts. In Part I, it provides an introduction to production scheduling, existing solution methods, and the GP approach to production scheduling. Characteristics of production environments, problem formulations, an abstract GP framework for production scheduling, and evaluation criteria are also presented. Part II shows various ways that GP can be employed to solve static production scheduling problems and their connections with conventional operation research methods. In turn, Part III shows how to design GP algorithms for dynamic production scheduling problems and describes advanced techniques for enhancing GP’s performance, including feature selection, surrogate modeling, and specialized genetic operators. In Part IV, the book addresses how to use heuristics to deal with multiple, potentially conflicting objectives in production scheduling problems, and presents an advanced multi-objective approach with cooperative coevolution techniques or multi-tree representations. Part V demonstrates how to use multitask learning techniques in the hyper-heuristics space for production scheduling. It also shows how surrogate techniques and assisted task selection strategies can benefit multitask learning with GP for learning heuristics in the context of production scheduling. Part VI rounds out the text with an outlook on the future.

Given its scope, the book benefits scientists, engineers, researchers, practitioners, postgraduates, and undergraduates in the areas of machine learning, artificial intelligence, evolutionary computation, operations research, and industrial engineering.

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Fangfang Zhang, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang

  • La Trobe Business School, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia

    Su Nguyen

About the authors

Fangfang Zhang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her current research interests include evolutionary computation, hyper-heuristics learning/optimization, job shop scheduling, and multitask optimization.

Su Nguyen is a Senior Research Fellow and Algorithm Lead at the Centre for Data Analytics and Cognition, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. His expertise includes evolutionary computation, simulation optimization, automated algorithm design, interfaces of artificial intelligence/operations research, and their applications in logistics, energy, and transportation. Dr. Nguyen chaired the IEEE Task Force on Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation from 2014 to 2018. He gave technical tutorials on evolutionary computation and artificial intelligence-based visualization at the Parallel Problem Solving from Nature Conference in 2018 and the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence in 2020.

Yi Mei is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has published more than 100 articles in prominent journals for Evolutionary Computation and Operations Research, including IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, Evolutionary Computation, European Journal of Operational Research, and ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software. His research interests include evolutionary scheduling and combinatorial optimization, machine learning, genetic programming, and hyper-heuristics.

Mengjie Zhang is a Professor of Computer Science, Head of the Evolutionary Computation Research Group, and Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) of the Faculty of Engineering, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His current research interests include artificial intelligence and machine learning, particularly genetic programming, image analysis, feature selection and reduction, job shop scheduling, and transfer learning. He has published over 600 research papers in international journals and conference proceedings. Prof. Zhang is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Fellow of the IEEE, and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. He has previously chaired the IEEE CIS Intelligent Systems and Applications Technical Committee, the IEEE CIS Emergent Technologies Technical Committee, and the Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee, and served on the IEEE CIS Award Committee. He is a Vice-Chair of the Task Force on Evolutionary Computer Vision and Image Processing, and the Founding Chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Chapter in New Zealand. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, a Fellow of the IEEE, and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. 

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access