This book describes the potentialities of metaheuristics for solving production scheduling problems and the relationship between these two fields. For the past several years, there has been an increasing interest in using metaheuristic methods to solve scheduling problems. The main reasons for this are that such problems are generally hard to solve to optimality, as well as the fact that metaheuristics provide very good solutions in a reasonable time. The first part of the book presents eight applications of metaheuristics for solving various mono-objective scheduling problems. The second part is itself split into two, the first section being devoted to five multi-objective problems to which metaheuristics are adapted, while the second tackles various transportation problems related to the organization of production systems. Many real-world applications are presented by the authors, making this an invaluable resource for researchers and students in engineering, economics, mathematics and computer science. Contents 1. An Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for Solving Flow Shop Scheduling Problems with Sequence-dependent Family Setup Times, Mansour Eddaly, Bassem Jarboui, Radhouan Bouabda, Patrick Siarry and Abdelwaheb Rebaï. 2. Genetic Algorithms for Solving Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problems, Imed Kacem. 3. A Hybrid GRASP-Differential Evolution Algorithm for Solving Flow Shop Scheduling Problems with No-Wait Constraints, Hanen Akrout, Bassem Jarboui, Patrick Siarry and Abdelwaheb Rebaï. 4. A Comparison of Local Search Metaheuristics for a Hierarchical Flow Shop Optimization Problem with Time Lags, Emna Dhouib, Jacques Teghem, Daniel Tuyttens and Taïcir Loukil. 5. Neutrality in Flow Shop Scheduling Problems: Landscape Structure and Local Search, Marie-Eléonore Marmion. 6. Evolutionary Metaheuristic Based on Genetic Algorithm: Application to Hybrid Flow Shop Problem with Availability Constraints, Nadia Chaaben, Racem Mellouli and Faouzi Masmoudi. 7. Models and Methods in Graph Coloration for Various Production Problems, Nicolas Zufferey. 8. Mathematical Programming and Heuristics for Scheduling Problems with Early and Tardy Penalties, Mustapha Ratli, Rachid Benmansour, Rita Macedo, Saïd Hanafi, Christophe Wilbaut. 9. Metaheuristics for Biobjective Flow Shop Scheduling, Matthieu Basseur and Arnaud Liefooghe. 10. Pareto Solution Strategies for the Industrial Car Sequencing Problem, Caroline Gagné, Arnaud Zinflou and Marc Gravel. 11. Multi-Objective Metaheuristics for the Joint Scheduling of Production and Maintenance, Ali Berrichi and Farouk Yalaoui. 12. Optimization via a Genetic Algorithm Parametrizing the AHP Method for Multicriteria Workshop Scheduling, Fouzia Ounnar, Patrick Pujo and Afef Denguir. 13. A Multicriteria Genetic Algorithm for the Resource-constrained Task Scheduling Problem, Olfa Dridi, Saoussen Krichen and Adel Guitouni. 14. Metaheuristics for the Solution of Vehicle Routing Problems in a Dynamic Context, Tienté Hsu, Gilles Gonçalves and Rémy Dupas. 15. Combination of a Metaheuristic and a Simulation Model for the Scheduling of Resource-constrained Transport Activities, Virginie André, Nathalie Grangeon and Sylvie Norre. 16. Vehicle Routing Problems with Scheduling Constraints, Rahma Lahyani, Frédéric Semet and Benoît Trouillet. 17. Metaheuristics for Job Shop Scheduling with Transportation, Qiao Zhang, Hervé Manier, Marie-Ange Manier. About the Authors Bassem Jarboui is Professor at the University of Sfax, Tunisia. Patrick Siarry is Professor at the Laboratoire Images, Signaux et Systèmes Intelligents (LISSI), University of Paris-Est Créteil, France. Jacques Teghem is Professor at the University of Mons, Belgium.

During the past decades scheduling has been among the most studied op- mization problemsanditisstillanactiveareaofresearch!Schedulingappears in many areas of science, engineering and industry and takes di?erent forms depending on the restrictions and optimization criteria of the operating en- ronments [8]. For instance, in optimization and computer science, scheduling has been de?ned as “the allocation of tasks to resources over time in order to achieve optimality in one or more objective criteria in an e?cient way” and in production as “production schedule, i. e. , the planning of the production or the sequence of operations according to which jobs pass through machines and is optimal with respect to certain optimization criteria. ” Although there is a standardized form of stating any scheduling problem, namely “e?cient allocation ofn jobs onm machines –which can process no more than one activity at a time– with the objective to optimize some - jective function of the job completion times”, scheduling is in fact a family of problems. Indeed, several parameters intervene in the problem de?nition: (a) job characteristics (preemptive or not, precedence constraints, release dates, etc. ); (b) resource environment (single vs. parallel machines, un- lated machines, identical or uniform machines, etc. ); (c) optimization criteria (minimize total tardiness, the number of late jobs, makespan, ?owtime, etc. ; maximize resource utilization, etc. ); and, (d) scheduling environment (static vs. dynamic,intheformerthenumberofjobstobeconsideredandtheirready times are available while in the later the number of jobs and their charact- istics change over time).

This book discusses the main techniques and newest trends to manage and optimize the production and service systems. The book begins by examining the three main levels of decision systems in production: the long term (strategic), the middle term (tactical) and short term (operational). It also considers online management as a new level (a sub level of the short term). As each level encounters specific problems, appropriate approaches to deal with these are introduced and explained. These problems include the line design, the line balancing optimization, the physical layout of the production or service system, the forecasting optimization, the inventory management, the scheduling etc. Metaheuristics for Production Systems then explores logistic optimization from two different perspectives: internal (production management), addressing issues of scheduling, layout and line designs, and external (supply chain management) focusing on transportation optimization, supply chain evaluation, and location of production. The book also looks at NP-hard problems that are common in production management. These complex configurations may mean that optimal solutions may not be reached due to variables, but the authors help provide a good solution for such problems. The effective new results and solutions offered in this book should appeal to researchers, managers, and engineers in the production and service industries.

Metaheuristics have been a very active research topic for more than two decades. During this time many new metaheuristic strategies have been devised, they have been experimentally tested and improved on challenging benchmark problems, and they have proven to be important tools for tackling optimization tasks in a large number of practical applications. In other words, metaheuristics are nowadays established as one of the main search paradigms for tackling computationally hard problems. Still, there are a large number of research challenges in the area of metaheuristics. These challenges range from more fundamental questions on theoretical properties and performance guarantees, empirical algorithm analysis, the effective configuration of metaheuristic algorithms, approaches to combine metaheuristics with other algorithmic techniques, towards extending the available techniques to tackle ever more challenging problems. This edited volume grew out of the contributions presented at the ninth Metaheuristics International Conference that was held in Udine, Italy, 25-28 July 2011. The conference comprised 117 presentations of peer-reviewed contributions and 3 invited talks, and it has been attended by 169 delegates. The chapters that are collected in this book exemplify contributions to several of the research directions outlined above.

The scope of this book is limited to heuristics, metaheuristics, and approximate methods and algorithms as applied to planning and scheduling problems. While it is not possible to give a comprehensive treatment of this topic in one book, the aim of this work is to provide the reader with a diverse set of planning and scheduling problems and different heuristic approaches to solve them. The problems range from traditional single stage and parallel machine problems to more modern settings such as robotic cells and flexible job shop networks. Furthermore, some chapters deal with deterministic problems while some others treat stochastic versions of the problems. Unlike most of the literature that deals with planning and scheduling problems in the manufacturing and production environments, in this book the environments were extended to nontraditional applications such as spatial scheduling (optimizing space over time), runway scheduling, and surgical scheduling. The solution methods used in the different chapters of the book also spread from well-established heuristics and metaheuristics such as Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization to more recent ones such as Meta-RaPS.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Metaheuristics, MIC 2022, held in Syracuse, Italy, in July 2022. The 48 full papers together with 17 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The papers detail metaheuristic techniques. Chapter “Evaluating the Effects of Chaos in Variable Neighbourhood Search” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This volume presents meta-heuristics approaches for Grid scheduling problems. It brings new ideas, analysis, implementations and evaluation of meta-heuristic techniques for Grid scheduling, which make this volume novel in several aspects.

The five-volume set IFIP AICT 630, 631, 632, 633, and 634 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International IFIP WG 5.7 Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems, APMS 2021, held in Nantes, France, in September 2021.* The 378 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 529 submissions. They discuss artificial intelligence techniques, decision aid and new and renewed paradigms for sustainable and resilient production systems at four-wall factory and value chain levels. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Part I: artificial intelligence based optimization techniques for demand-driven manufacturing; hybrid approaches for production planning and scheduling; intelligent systems for manufacturing planning and control in the industry 4.0; learning and robust decision support systems for agile manufacturing environments; low-code and model-driven engineering for production system; meta-heuristics and optimization techniques for energy-oriented manufacturing systems; metaheuristics for production systems; modern analytics and new AI-based smart techniques for replenishment and production planning under uncertainty; system identification for manufacturing control applications; and the future of lean thinking and practice Part II: digital transformation of SME manufacturers: the crucial role of standard; digital transformations towards supply chain resiliency; engineering of smart-product-service-systems of the future; lean and Six Sigma in services healthcare; new trends and challenges in reconfigurable, flexible or agile production system; production management in food supply chains; and sustainability in production planning and lot-sizing Part III: autonomous robots in delivery logistics; digital transformation approaches in production management; finance-driven supply chain; gastronomic service system design; modern scheduling and applications in industry 4.0; recent advances in sustainable manufacturing; regular session: green production and circularity concepts; regular session: improvement models and methods for green and innovative systems; regular session: supply chain and routing management; regular session: robotics and human aspects; regular session: classification and data management methods; smart supply chain and production in society 5.0 era; and supply chain risk management under coronavirus Part IV: AI for resilience in global supply chain networks in the context of pandemic disruptions; blockchain in the operations and supply chain management; data-based services as key enablers for smart products, manufacturing and assembly; data-driven methods for supply chain optimization; digital twins based on systems engineering and semantic modeling; digital twins in companies first developments and future challenges; human-centered artificial intelligence in smart manufacturing for the operator 4.0; operations management in engineer-to-order manufacturing; product and asset life cycle management for smart and sustainable manufacturing systems; robotics technologies for control, smart manufacturing and logistics; serious games analytics: improving games and learning support; smart and sustainable production and supply chains; smart methods and techniques for sustainable supply chain management; the new digital lean manufacturing paradigm; and the role of emerging technologies in disaster relief operations: lessons from COVID-19 Part V: data-driven platforms and applications in production and logistics: digital twins and AI for sustainability; regular session: new approaches for routing problem solving; regular session: improvement of design and operation of manufacturing systems; regular session: crossdock and transportation issues; regular session: maintenance improvement and lifecycle management; regular session: additive manufacturing and mass customization; regular session: frameworks and conceptual modelling for systems and services efficiency; regular session: optimization of production and transportation systems; regular session: optimization of supply chain agility and reconfigurability; regular session: advanced modelling approaches; regular session: simulation and optimization of systems performances; regular session: AI-based approaches for quality and performance improvement of production systems; and regular session: risk and performance management of supply chains *The conference was held online.

Today’s manufacturing systems are undergoing significant changes in the aspects of planning, production execution, and delivery. It is imperative to stay up-to-date on the latest trends in optimization to efficiently create products for the market. The Handbook of Research on Applied Optimization Methodologies in Manufacturing Systems is a pivotal reference source including the latest scholarly research on heuristic models for solving manufacturing and supply chain related problems. Featuring exhaustive coverage on a broad range of topics such as assembly ratio, car sequencing, and color constraints, this publication is ideally designed for practitioners seeking new comprehensive models for problem solving in manufacturing and supply chain management.

Developments in metaheuristics continue to advance computation beyond its traditional methods. With groundwork built on multidisciplinary research findings; metaheuristics, algorithms, and optimization approaches uses memory manipulations in order to take full advantage of strategic level problem solving. Trends in Developing Metaheuristics, Algorithms, and Optimization Approaches provides insight on the latest advances and analysis of technologies in metaheuristics computing. Offering widespread coverage on topics such as genetic algorithms, differential evolution, and ant colony optimization, this book aims to be a forum researchers, practitioners, and students who wish to learn and apply metaheuristic computing.