As the older population grows larger there is a growing need to provide health care at home. This services are generally done without operational research. As more people will require home care there will be a need to increase the efficiency of the service while keeping the quality high. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how we can use operation research in home care as well as define how we can model the quality and use those quality parameters in order to offer the best possible service. The model uses VRP with Time windows in order to schedule the routes and incorporates service requirements at the customers. A solution is obtained by first constructing an initial solution that fulfills the duration constraint. Then it uses a local search with a dynamic insertion heuristic to improve on the solution. Tabu search is used as a meta-heuristic to prevent the solution the get stuck in a local minima. The solver is used in order to optimize the quality parameters. The result obtained can be used to help home care providers to determine the level of quality they can supply with a limited budget / När den äldre befolkningen blir större växer behovet av att tillhandahålla vård i hemmet. Denna tjänst använder i allmänhet inte systemteori. Eftersom fler människor kommer att behöva hemtjänst kommer det att finnas behov av att öka effektiviteten samtidigt som kvaliteten hålls hög. Syftet med denna avhandling är att undersöka hur vi kan använda systemteori och optimering inom hemtjänst samt definiera hur vi kan modellera kvaliteten och använda dessa kvalitetsparametrar för att erbjuda bästa möjliga service. Modellen använder VRP med Time windows för att schemalägga rutterna och inkorporerar servicebehov hos kunderna. En lösning erhålles genom att först bygga en initial lösning. Sedan använder den en lokal sökning med en dynamisk heuristisk för att förbättra lösningen. Tabu search används som en meta-heuristik för att förhindra att lösningen fastnar i lokala minima. Algoritmen används för att optimera kvalitetsparametrarna. Resultatet kan användas för att hjälpa leverantörer av hemtjänst att bestämma vilken kvalitetsnivå de kan leverera med en begränsad budget

The aim of my thesis is to find the shortest total route to export trash at the bus stops for several variants and also determine the suitability of approximate algorithms. The tasks are solved by insertion heuristic, closest neighbor heuristic and optimization. The optimal solution is gained by using the system LINGO and by using optimization solver CPLEX. In my thesis I first describe the problem of maintenance of bus stops. Following chapter is devoted to the role of routing problems, its classifications, problems to solve, possibilities of solution. The used methods are Traveling Salesman Problem with one or multiple vehicles available in a unique depot and Vehicle Routing Problem with one or multiple vehicles available in a unique depot or multiple depots. The last chapter describes and compare the results of the solution of insertion heuristic, closest neighbor heuristic and optimization for problem of replacement of bus schedules and of maintenance of bus stops.

A hierarchical control system is proposed for automated flexible manufacturing cells (FMC) that operate in a job shop flow setting. The control system is made up of a higher level scheduler/reactive scheduler, which optimizes the production flow within the cell, and a lower level supervisor that implements the decisions of the scheduler on the shop floor. Previous studies have regularly considered the production scheduling and the supervisory control as two separate problems. This has led to: i) deadlock-prone optimized schedules that cannot be implemented in an automated setting, ii) deadlock-free optimized schedules that lack the means to be transformed into shop floor supervisors, or iii) supervisors that can safely drive the system with no consideration for production performance. The proposed control system combines mathematical models and an insertion heuristic to solve the deadlock-free scheduling problem in job shops, a deadlock-free reactive scheduling heuristic that can revise the schedules upon the occurrence of a wide variety of disruptions, and a systematic procedure that can transform schedules into readily implementable Petri net (PN) supervisors. The integration of these modules into one control hierarchy guarantees a correct, optimized and agile behavior of the controlled system. The performances of the mathematical models, the scheduling and the reactive scheduling heuristics were evaluated by comparison to performances of previous approaches. Experimental results showed that the proposed modules performed consistently better than the other corresponding approaches. The supervisor realization procedure and the overall control architecture were validated by simulation and implementation in an experimental robotic FMC. The control system developed was capable of driving the experimental cell to satisfactorily complete the processing of different product mixes that featured complex processing routes through the cell.

A hierarchical control system is proposed for automated flexible manufacturing cells (FMC) that operate in a job shop flow setting. The control system is made up of a higher level scheduler/reactive scheduler, which optimizes the production flow within the cell, and a lower level supervisor that implements the decisions of the scheduler on the shop floor. Previous studies have regularly considered the production scheduling and the supervisory control as two separate problems. This has led to: i) deadlock-prone optimized schedules that cannot be implemented in an automated setting, ii) deadlock-free optimized schedules that lack the means to be transformed into shop floor supervisors, or iii) supervisors that can safely drive the system with no consideration for production performance. The proposed control system combines mathematical models and an insertion heuristic to solve the deadlock-free scheduling problem in job shops, a deadlock-free reactive scheduling heuristic that can revise the schedules upon the occurrence of a wide variety of disruptions, and a systematic procedure that can transform schedules into readily implementable Petri net (PN) supervisors. The integration of these modules into one control hierarchy guarantees a correct, optimized and agile behavior of the controlled system. The performances of the mathematical models, the scheduling and the reactive scheduling heuristics were evaluated by comparison to performances of previous approaches. Experimental results showed that the proposed modules performed consistently better than the other corresponding approaches. The supervisor realization procedure and the overall control architecture were validated by simulation and implementation in an experimental robotic FMC. The control system developed was capable of driving the experimental cell to satisfactorily complete the processing of different product mixes that featured complex processing routes through the cell.

A CONWIP (Constant Work-In-Progress) system is basically a hybrid system with a PUSH-PULL interface at the first machine in the line. This research addresses the most general case of a cyclic CONWIP system by incorporating two additional constraints over earlier studies namely; stochastic processing times and limited intermediate storage. One of the main issues in the design of a CONWIP system is the WIP level 'M', to be maintained. This research proposes an iterative procedure to determine this optimal level. The second main issue is the optimization of the line by determining an appropriate job sequence. This research assumes a 'permutational' scheduling policy and proposes an iterative approach to find the best sequence. The approach utilizes a controlled enumerative approach called the Fast Insertion Heuristic (FIH) coupled with a method to appraise the quality of every enumeration at each iteration. This is done by using a modified version of the Floyd's algorithm, to determine the cycle time (or Flow time) of a partial/full solution. The performance measures considered are the Flow time and the Interdeparture time (inverse of throughput). Finally, both the methods suggested for the two subproblems, are tested through computer implementations to reveal their proficiency. / Master of Science

This work describes static and dynamic problems with one messenger or multiple number of messengers and suggests a possibility of solving such problems with modified heuristic methods. To solve messenger problem, modified nearest neighbor heuristic, modified insertion heuristic and modified exchange heuristic are used. The main contribution of this work are applications, developed in MS Excel, programmed with Visual Basic for Application, that can solve static and dynamic problems with one messenger or multiple number of messengers and that could be beneficial for companies that do business in messenger services.