In this paper, the heuristic rules are proposed to derive the rephasing strategy of laterals and distribution transformers to improve the three phase unbalance of distribution systems. The distribution feeder network has been obtained by retrieving the attribute data of distribution components from the database of outage management system (OMS) in Taipower. The topology process and node reduction have also been executed to identify the network configuration and to prepare the input data for load flow analysis. With the monthly energy consumption of customers served by each transformer, which has been retrieved from the Customer Information System (CIS), the hourly loading of each distribution transformer can be derived. By performing the three phase load flow analysis, the three phase currents and neutral current of each primary trunk line section and each lateral can be calculated. The heuristic rule is employed to determine the phase adjustment strategy laterals and distribution transformers for rephasing to achieve three phase balancing. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology for three phase balancing, two practical distribution feeders in Taipower Fengshan District are selected for simulation. After rephasing the distribution transformers and laterals proposed by this paper, the three phase currents and netural of the test feeders have been collected. By companing to the neutral current before rephasing, it is found that the neutral current of test feeders have been reduced significantly and there phase balancing has been obtained by executing the proposed strategy derived using the heuristic rule.

Unbalanced operation of distribution feeders not only affects equipment utilization, voltage level and system protection, but it also increases extra energy losses. This leads to a deterioration of service quality, reliability and operation efficiency of a distribution system. This dissertation analyzes the problems of unbalanced three-phase distribution feeders, and offers potential solutions. Due to the voluminous data involved in a distribution system, analyzing the system by retrieving system data from paper maps is tedious and difficult. Thus, this dissertation uses data from the already constructed Outage Management System (OMS) of Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) to support distribution feeder three-phase unbalance analysis. The distribution feeder network was obtained by retrieving the connectivity table and attribute data of distribution components from the database of OMS. The topology process and node reduction were executed to identify the network configuration and to prepare the input data for load flow analysis. The hourly loading of each distribution transformer was derived using data of monthly energy consumption of customers served by each transformer, as retrieved from the Customer Information System (CIS), and the typical daily load patterns of customer classes. By performing three-phase load flow analysis, phase currents and neutral current of each primary trunk line section and each lateral could be calculated. Finally, an expert system is proposed to establish the rephasing strategy of laterals and distribution transformers to improve the imbalance of the three phases of the unbalanced distribution feeders. The heuristic rules adopted by distribution engineers are incorporated in the knowledge base of the expert system in the problem-solving process. The neutral current reduction algorithm is developed to support the inference engine to derive the rephasing strategy to reduce the neutral current of distribution feeder. In doing so, customer service interruption due to unexpected tripping of low energy over current relay (LCO) can be prevented, and furthermore the customer service interruption costs and labor costs to implement the rephasing strategy can be justified by the reduced power loss. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this proposed methodology in improving the three-phase unbalance of the distribution feeders, two actual distribution feeders in the Taipower Fengshan District were selected for computer simulation. After Taipower engineers implement the proposed rephasing strategies, the data of phase currents and neutral current of test feeders were collected from the SCADA system of Distribution Dispatch Control Center (DDCC). By comparing to the neutral current of test feeders before rephasing, it is concluded that the proposed rephasing strategy is effective in achieving three-phase balance of the distribution feeders after executing the rephasing of laterals and distribution transformers.

no / No / Scheduling systems based on traditional heuristic rules, which deal with the complexities of manufacturing systems, have been used by researchers for the past six decades. These heuristics rules prioritise all jobs that are waiting to be processed on a resource. In this paper, a novel Index Based Heuristic (IBH) solution for the Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) is presented with the objective of minimising the overall Makespan (Cmax). The JSSP is still a challenge to researchers and is far from being completely solved due to its combinatorial nature. JSSP suits the challenges of current manufacturing environments. The proposed IBH calculates the indices of candidate jobs and assigns the job with the lower index value to the available machine. To minimise the gap between jobs, a swap technique is introduced. The swap technique takes candidate jobs for a machine and swaps them without violating the precedence constraint. Several benchmark problems are solved from the literature to test the validity and effectiveness of the proposed heuristic. The results show that the proposed IBH based algorithm outperforms the traditional heuristics and is a valid methodology for JSSP optimization.

As refinarias de petróleo utilizam grandes quantidades de água em seus processos e por isso são impelidas a desenvolver fortes programas de redução de seu consumo. O objetivo do presente estudo é a aplicação de metodologia de otimização em problemas de alocação ótima e reuso de água em refinaria de petróleo. Diferentemente dos enfoques tradicionais que buscam tratar os efluentes gerados para atender às legislações ambientais ou para algum tipo de reuso na planta, a metodologia utilizada avalia os processos que usam água, questionando as causas da geração do efluente. Essa abordagem envolve o levantamento de dados industriais, análise dos processos de produção, identificação de oportunidades para aplicar as estratégias de otimização da alocação de água: racionalização, reuso e/ou reciclagem do efluente e, em seguida, a otimização da rede de água. Visando obter uma rede de água que seja aplicável na indústria, desenvolveu-se um procedimento específico baseado em regras heurísticas que representam as restrições reais dos processos. Através deste procedimento, o consumo de água fresca atingido é próximo do valor ótimo encontrado na literatura. As redes de água geradas são simples, com poucas interconexões e, consequentemente, os investimentos necessários para implementação são menores. / Oil refineries consume a large amount of water in their processes and because of that they are urged to develop strong programs to reduce their water consumption. The aim of this study is to apply an water optimization methodology in an oil refinery. Unlike traditional approaches that only search for treating the effluents in order to meet environmental legislation or to reuse in the plant, this methodology evaluates the processes that use water, questioning the causes of the wastewater generation. This approach involves the industrial data collection, analysis of production processes, identification of opportunities to optimize water use: rationalization, reuse and/or recycling of the effluent and, lastly, the water network optimization. Looking for a water network that is applicable in the industry, in this study it was also developed a specific optimization procedure based on heuristic rules representing the constraints of the actual processes. Through this procedure, freshwater consumption was found to be close to that of the theories found in the literature. The water networks generated are simple, with few interconnections and, consequently, the investments required to implement them are small.

Online auctions are arguably one of the most important and distinctly new applications of the internet. The predominant player in online auctions, eBay, has over 18.9 milllion users, and it was the host of over $5 billion worth of goods sold in the year 2000. Using methods from approximate dynamic programming and integer programming, we design algorithms for optimally bidding for a single item online auction, and simultaneous or overlapping multiple online auctions. We report computational evidence using data from eBay's web site from 1772 completed auctions for personal digital assistants and from 4208 completed auctions for stamp collections that show that (a) the optimal dynamic strategy outperforms simple but widely used static heuristic rules for a single auction, and (b) a new approach combining the value functions of single auctions found by dynamic programming using an integer programming framework produces high quality solutions fast and reliably. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

As refinarias de petróleo utilizam grandes quantidades de água em seus processos e por isso são impelidas a desenvolver fortes programas de redução de seu consumo. O objetivo do presente estudo é a aplicação de metodologia de otimização em problemas de alocação ótima e reuso de água em refinaria de petróleo. Diferentemente dos enfoques tradicionais que buscam tratar os efluentes gerados para atender às legislações ambientais ou para algum tipo de reuso na planta, a metodologia utilizada avalia os processos que usam água, questionando as causas da geração do efluente. Essa abordagem envolve o levantamento de dados industriais, análise dos processos de produção, identificação de oportunidades para aplicar as estratégias de otimização da alocação de água: racionalização, reuso e/ou reciclagem do efluente e, em seguida, a otimização da rede de água. Visando obter uma rede de água que seja aplicável na indústria, desenvolveu-se um procedimento específico baseado em regras heurísticas que representam as restrições reais dos processos. Através deste procedimento, o consumo de água fresca atingido é próximo do valor ótimo encontrado na literatura. As redes de água geradas são simples, com poucas interconexões e, consequentemente, os investimentos necessários para implementação são menores. / Oil refineries consume a large amount of water in their processes and because of that they are urged to develop strong programs to reduce their water consumption. The aim of this study is to apply an water optimization methodology in an oil refinery. Unlike traditional approaches that only search for treating the effluents in order to meet environmental legislation or to reuse in the plant, this methodology evaluates the processes that use water, questioning the causes of the wastewater generation. This approach involves the industrial data collection, analysis of production processes, identification of opportunities to optimize water use: rationalization, reuse and/or recycling of the effluent and, lastly, the water network optimization. Looking for a water network that is applicable in the industry, in this study it was also developed a specific optimization procedure based on heuristic rules representing the constraints of the actual processes. Through this procedure, freshwater consumption was found to be close to that of the theories found in the literature. The water networks generated are simple, with few interconnections and, consequently, the investments required to implement them are small.

This thesis is aimed at studying the open pit truck- shovel haulage systems using computer simulation approach. The main goal of the study is to enhance the analysis and comparison of heuristic truck dispatching policies currently available and search for an adaptive rule applicable to open pit mines. For this purpose, a stochastic truck dispatching and production simulation program is developed for a medium size open pit mine consisting of several production faces and a single dump site using GPSS/H software. Eight basic rules are modeled in separate program files. The program considers all components of truck cycle and normal distribution is used to model all these variables. The program asks the user to enter the number of trucks initially assigned to each shovel site. Full-factorial simulation experiments are made to investigate the effects of several factors including the dispatching rules, the number of trucks operating, the number of shovels operating, the variability in truck loading, hauling and return times, the distance between shovels and dump site, and availability of shovel and truck resources. The breakdown of shovel and trucks are modeled using exponential distribution. Three performance measures are selected as truck production, overall shovel utilization and overall truck utilizations. Statistical analysis of the simulation experiments is done using ANOVA method with Minitab software. Regression analysis gives coefficient of determination values, R2, of 56.7 %, 84.1 %, and 79.6 % for the three performance measures, respectively. Also, Tukey&rsquo / s method of mean comparison test is carried out to compare the basic dispatching rules. From the results of statistical analysis, it is concluded that the effects of basic truck dispatching rules on the system performance are not significant. But, the main factors affecting the performances are the number of trucks, the number of shovels, the distance between the shovels and dump site, finally the availability of shovel and truck resources. Also, there are significant interaction effects between these main factors. Finally, an adaptive rule using the standardized utilization of shovels and trucks is developed.

Background: Entrepreneurship plays an indispensable role in today’s society. Especially, the creation of new ventures promotes economic growth and new opportunities. Hereof, Sweden is viewed as a role-model, since it is one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial active countries in the world. Almost 6% of Sweden’s inhabitants are currently characterized as nascent entrepreneurs and thus, are engaged in early entrepreneurial activities without having started an official venture yet. Considering the fact that nascent entrepreneurs have no prior entrepreneurial experience while facing uncertain environments, they have to evaluate the attractiveness of new venture ideas and decide whether they are worth to pursue or to drop them. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore the evaluation approach of nascent entrepreneurs in the light of new venture ideas. More precisely, we want to investigate what kind of approaches they make use of when evaluating the attractiveness of those ideas and their motives behind the approaches. Method: This thesis is of qualitative nature while following an inductive approach and conducting a multiple case study with ten cases of different nascent entrepreneurs. The data is collected through semi-structured interviews, which were conducted in personal face-to-face meetings. For analysing the empirical findings, we engaged in within-case and cross-case analyses, where we identified and analysed common patterns and differences across the cases. Conclusion: All of the research respondents apply a variety of evaluation approaches, where they make use of their cognition as a means of judging and assessing the attractiveness of new venture ideas. Besides utilizing their social network, existing knowledge and future estimations, all nascent entrepreneurs are using heuristic rules-of-thumb for evaluating the idea attractiveness. Thereby, we identified Passion, Monetary Incentives, Resources and Market Potential as the most outstanding rules-of-thumb in the clear majority of the cases.