A solution framework for scheduling a BPM with non-identical job dimensions

A Batch Processing Machine (BPM) is one which processes a number of jobs simultaneously as a batch with common beginning and ending times. Also, a BPM, once started cannot be interrupted in between (Pre-emption not allowed). This research is motivated by a BPM in steel casting industry. There are three main stages in any steel casting industry viz., pre-casting stage, casting stage and post-casting stage. A quick overview of the entire process, is shown in Figure 1. There are two BPMs : (1) Melting furnace in the pre-casting stage and (2) Heat Treatment Furnace (HTF) in the post casting stage of steel casting manufacturing process. This study focuses on scheduling the latter, namely HTF. Heat-treatment operation is one of the most important stages of steel casting industries. It determines the final properties that enable components to perform under demanding service conditions such as large mechanical load, high temperature and anti-corrosive processing. In general, different types of castings have to undergo more than one type of heat-treatment operations, where the total heat-treatment processing times change. To have a better control, castings are primarily classified into a number of job-families based on the alloy type such as low-alloy castings and high alloy castings. For technical reasons such as type of alloy, temperature level and the expected combination of heat-treatment operations, the castings from different families can not be processed together in the same batch.

Scheduling parallel batch processors with incompatible job families using ant colony optimization

The present work concerns with the static scheduling of jobs to parallel identical batch processors with incompatible job families for minimizing the total weighted tardiness. This scheduling problem is applicable in burn-in operations and wafer fabrication in semiconductor manufacturing. We decompose the problem into two stages: batch formation and batch scheduling, as in the literature. The Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based algorithm called ATC-BACO algorithm is developed in which ACO is used to solve the batch scheduling problems. Our computational experimentation shows that the proposed ATC-BACO algorithm performs better than the available best traditional dispatching rule called ATC-BATC rule.

Popular Matchings with Variable Job Capacities

We consider the problem of matching people to jobs, where each person ranks a subset of jobs in an order of preference, possibly involving ties. There are several notions of optimality about how to best match each person to a job; in particular, popularity is a natural and appealing notion of optimality. However, popular matchings do not always provide an answer to the problem of determining an optimal matching since there are simple instances that do not adroit popular matchings. This motivates the following extension of the popular rnatchings problem:Given a graph G; = (A boolean OR J, E) where A is the set of people and J is the set of jobs, and a list < c(1), c(vertical bar J vertical bar)) denoting upper bounds on the capacities of each job, does there exist (x(1), ... , x(vertical bar J vertical bar)) such that setting the capacity of i-th, job to x(i) where 1 <= x(i) <= c(i), for each i, enables the resulting graph to admit a popular matching. In this paper we show that the above problem is NP-hard. We show that the problem is NP-hard even when each c is 1 or 2.

Adaptive optimal load balancing in a nonhomogeneous multiserver system with a central job scheduler

A model comprising several servers, each equipped with its own queue and with possibly different service speeds, is considered. Each server receives a dedicated arrival stream of jobs; there is also a stream of generic jobs that arrive to a job scheduler and can be individually allocated to any of the servers. It is shown that if the arrival streams are all Poisson and all jobs have the same exponentially distributed service requirements, the probabilistic splitting of the generic stream that minimizes the average job response time is such that it balances the server idle times in a weighted least-squares sense, where the weighting coefficients are related to the service speeds of the servers. The corresponding result holds for nonexponentially distributed service times if the service speeds are all equal. This result is used to develop adaptive quasi-static algorithms for allocating jobs in the generic arrival stream when the load parameters are unknown. The algorithms utilize server idle-time measurements which are sent periodically to the central job scheduler. A model is developed for these measurements, and the result mentioned is used to cast the problem into one of finding a projection of the root of an affine function, when only noisy values of the function can be observed

Independent and mediating organizational commitment effects of trust in leadership on employees' job satisfaction and : a study within social and health care sector

The purpose of this study was to examine whether trust in supervisor and trust in senior management enhance employees' job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and whether trust mediates the relationship between perceived justice and these outcomes. Trust in supervisor was expected to mediate the effects of distributive justice and interactional justice, and trust in senior management was expected to mediate the effects of procedural justice. Theoretical background of the study is based on the framework for trust in leadership developed by Dirks and Ferrin (2002). According to the framework, perceived fairness of leaders' actions helps employees to draw inferences about the basis of the relationship and about leaders' characters. This allows trust formation. Reciprocation of care and concern in the relationship and confidence in leaders' characters are likely to enhance employees' job satisfaction and organizational commitment. This study was conducted with cross-sectional data (A/ = 960) of employees from social and health care sector. Hypotheses were studied using correlation analysis and several hierarchical regression analyses. Significances of the mediations were assessed using the Sobel test. Results partially supported the hypotheses. Trust in leadership was positively related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Trust in senior management mediated the relationship between procedural justice and the outcomes. Some support was also found for the mediating effect of trust in supervisor in the relationship between distributive justice and organizational commitment. Due to high correlation between trust in supervisor anil interactional justice, it wasn't possible to study the mediating e fleet of trust in supervisor in the relationship between interactional justice and the outcomes. Against expectations, results indicated that trust in senior management had a mediating effect in the relationship between distributive justice and organizational commitment, and in the relationship between interactional justice and organizational commitment. Results also indicated that trust in supervisor had a mediating effect in the relationship between procedural justice and organizational commitment.

Minimizing total completion time on a batch processing machine with job families

We consider the problem of minimizing the total completion time on a single batch processing machine. The set of jobs to be scheduled can be partitioned into a number of families, where all jobs in the same family have the same processing time. The machine can process at most B jobs simultaneously as a batch, and the processing time of a batch is equal to the processing time of the longest job in the batch. We analyze that properties of an optimal schedule and develop a dynamic programming algorithm of polynomial time complexity when the number of job families is fixed. The research is motivated by the problem of scheduling burn-in ovens in the semiconductor industry

Minimizing total weighted tardiness on heterogeneous batch processors with incompatible job families

In this paper, we address a scheduling problem for minimizing total weighted tardiness. The background for the paper is derived from the automobile gear manufacturing process. We consider the bottleneck operation of heat treatment stage of gear manufacturing. Real-life scenarios like unequal release times, incompatible job families, nonidentical job sizes, heterogeneous batch processors, and allowance for job splitting have been considered. We have developed a mathematical model which takes into account dynamic starting conditions. The problem considered in this study is NP-hard in nature, and hence heuristic algorithms have been proposed to address it. For real-life large-size problems, the performance of the proposed heuristic algorithms is evaluated using the method of estimated optimal solution available in literature. Extensive computational analyses reveal that the proposed heuristic algorithms are capable of consistently obtaining near-optimal statistically estimated solutions in very reasonable computational time.

Comportamiento de tres cultivares clonales de quequisque (Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Scott) en la Comunidad de la Poma, Masaya, postrera 99-00

El objetivo del presente estudio fue el determinar el rendimiento y adaptabilidad de tres cultivares clonales de quequisque Masaya (MY), Nueva Guinea (NG) y Apalí (AP), en la comunidad de La Poma, Masaya establecidas en época de postrera. El ensayo se estableció siguiendo arreglo del diseño de bloque completos al azar, unifactorial, con tres tratamientos y tres bloques. La parcela experimental estuvo conformada de 4 surcos de 13 m y l m de separación entre ellos, para un área de 52 m2 En cada surco se establecieron 22 plantas y una separación de 0. 6 m entre las mismas, para un total de 88 plantas por parcela, 264 por bloque y 792 totales en el ensayo. La parcela útil la conformaron los 2 surcos centrales sin incluir las primeras 5 plantas, para un total de 20 plantas evaluadas. El área del bloque fue de 156 m y el área total del ensayo de 468 m . Las variables evaluadas fueron: las morfológicas (altura de planta en cm, número de hojas, grosor del seudotallo en cm2, área foliar en cm2 y número de hijos), los componentes del rendimiento (peso promedio por cormelo en g, peso promedio de cormelos por planta en g, dimensión de cormelo en cm2 y número de cormelos); los eventos morfológicos (velocidad de brotación y ahijamiento, momento de cosecha), incidencia de enfermedades virales, fungosas y bacterianas y el efecto del DMV sobre el rendimiento. El análisis de varianza realizado a las variables morfológicas indica que: los 3 genotipos presentaron valores estadísticamente similares en las variables altura de planta, grosor del seudotallo, número de hojas y área foliar al menos en las 6 primeras evaluaciones, únicamente en variable número de hijos el clon NG obtuvo resultados estadísticamente superiores a los otros dones en estudio. El ANDEVA de los datos de los componentes del rendimiento señala que no hubo diferencias estadísticas entre los cultivares en cuanto a peso de los cormelos por planta: NG (75.26 qq/mz), AP (53,67 qq/mz) y MY (64.98 qq/mz)y dimensiones del cormelo; sin embargo, el número de cormelos por planta las plantas NG reportaron valores promedios superiores estadísticamente a los reportados por el clon MY (2.94) y AP (3. 28). El peso promedio de los cormos fue superior estadísticamente en el don MY (79.16 g) con relación a los reportados por NG (58.35g) y AP (79. 16 g). Se realizó un primer test de ELISA a las muestras de hojas de plantas que presentaban los síntomas, se encontró un 96 % de incidencia del DMV en las muestras . Considerando el total de plantas por cultivar en el ensayo, la mayor incidencia la presentó el clon NG con 47 %. Tres conteos visuales posteriores indican que los valores de plantas que presentan los síntomas. varían en cada fecha de evaluación encontrándose el cv. Apalí con los mayores valores de infección. Los conteos visuales de los síntomas de la bacteria Xanthomona campestris (Pammel) Dowson registran los mayores valores al cultivar AP con valores de 6 %, seguido del cultivar NG con 3.33% y MY con 1.66% a los 150 dds y un leve incremento a los 210 dds de 8. 33% para el AP y 5 % para los cultivares NG y MY. Los conteos visuales de los síntomas de Collectrotichum Kloesporioides (Penz) indican que los valores de reportados a los 150 dds redujeron a los 210 dds en todos los genotipos. En el caso del cultivar NG de 13.33 % en la primera fecha a 5% en la segunda, de 10 a 3.33% en el cultivar AP, y de 13.33 a 6.66% en el caso del clon MY.

Decomposing the Gender Wage Gap: The effect of firms, occupations and Job Stratification

This paper presents new evidence on the role of segregation into firms, occupations within a firm and stratification into professional categories within firm-occupations in explaining the gender wage gap. I use a generalized earnings model that allows observed and unobserved group characteristics to have different impact on wages of men and women within the same group. The database is a large sample of individual wage data from the 1995 Spanish Wage Structure Survey. Results indicate that firm segregation in our sample accounts for around one-fifth of the raw gender wage gap. Occupational segregation within firms accounts for about one-third of the raw wage gap, and stratification into different professional categories within firms and occupations explains another one-third of it. The remaining one-fifth of the overall gap arises from better outcomes of men relative to women within professional categories. It is also found that rewards to both observable and unobservable skills, particularly those related to education, are higher for males than for females within the same group. Finally, mean wages in occupations or job categories with a higher fraction of female co-workers are lower, but the negative impact of femaleness in higher for women.

Competitive Pressure and Job Interview Lying: A Game Theoretical Analysis

We consider a job contest in which candidates go through interviews (cheap talk) and are subject to reference checks. We show how competitive pressure - increasing the ratio of "good" to "bad" type candi- dates - can lead to a vast increase in lying and in some cases make bad hires more likely. As the number of candidates increases, it becomes harder to in- duce truth-telling. The interview stage becomes redundant if the candidates, a priori, know each others' type or the result of their own reference check. Finally, we show that the employer can bene t from committing not to reject all the applicants.

Collecção dos breves pontificios, e leys regias, que forão expedidos, e publicadas desde o anno de 1741, sobre a liberdade das pessoas, bens, e commercio dos indios do Brasil : dos excessos que naquelle Estado obraram os regulares da companhia denominada de Jesu; das reprezentaçoens que Sua Magestade Fidelissima fez à Santa Séde Apostolica, sobre esta materia até a expedição do breve que ordenou a reforma dos sobreditos regulares

Brasil. [Leis etc]