Showing papers by "Chandrasekharan Rajendran published in 2004"
TL;DR: A comparison of solutions yielded by the proposed ant-colony algorithms with the best heuristic solutions known for the benchmark problems, as published in an extensive study by Liu and Reeves is carried out.
441 citations
TL;DR: The performance of the proposed SA algorithm is found to be very good, and the proposed heuristic performs better than the existing heuristics.
Abstract: The problem of scheduling in static flowshops is considered with the objective of minimizing mean or total tardiness of jobs. A heuristic algorithm based on the simulated annealing (SA) technique is developed. The salient features of the proposed SA algorithm are the development of two new perturbation schemes for use in the proposed SA algorithm and a new improvement scheme to improve the quality of the solutions. The proposed algorithm is evaluated by using the benchmark problems available in the literature. The performance of the proposed SA algorithm is found to be very good, and the proposed heuristic performs better than the existing heuristics.
75 citations
TL;DR: This study proposes dispatching rules by explicitly considering different weights or penalties for flowtime and tardiness of a job, and the results of simulation are presented.
56 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the critical factors of quality management in software are identified from an exhaustive survey of the literature, and propose a conceptual framework for the implementation of TQM in the software industry.
Abstract: The factors of ever-increasing customer demand, global competition, and software quality have made the process of software development with a focus on quality quite demanding and challenging. Over the past few years the organizations engaged in the software business have been forced to adopt new managerial philosophies and techniques that seek to address the technical and human issues for an effective software-quality management. Many organizations have started adopting Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy, which aims at ‘quality through the process of continuous improvement, teamwork, and customer satisfaction’, as a useful tool for enhancing software quality. In this article, the critical factors of quality management in software are identified from an exhaustive survey of the literature, and propose a conceptual framework for the implementation of TQM in the software industry.
54 citations
TL;DR: This is perhaps the first time that an extensive study, with in-depth literature survey on quality management in the software industry followed by empirical analyses, has been undertaken to develop a holistic framework for TQM in theSoftware industry.
Abstract: The software industry has felt the impact of global competition, and software quality practitioners are seeing total quality management (TQM) as a competitive strategy to help gain a competitive advantage. Factors critical to TQM in the software industr..
49 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the problem of non-permutation scheduling in a flowline-based manufacturing system is considered with the focus on the development of nonpermutation schedules, and a simple heuristic procedure to derive non- permutation schedules from a given permutation sequence is proposed.
Abstract: A flowline-based manufacturing system is a manufacturing environment where machines are arranged in accordance with the order of processing of jobs, with all jobs having an identical and unidirectional flow pattern through the machines; however, some or all jobs may have missing operations on some machines In several practical situations the setup times of jobs are separable, significant and sequence-dependent The problem of scheduling in such a flowline-based manufacturing system is considered with the focus on the development of non-permutation schedules The deficiency of using the existing set of recursive equations in developing the timetable for permutation schedules is first highlighted, and a correct and modified set of recursive equations to take account of the missing operations properly is formulated A simple heuristic procedure to derive non-permutation schedules from a given permutation sequence is proposed subsequently Through extensive computational experimentation, it is shown that the proposed heuristic procedure yields solutions of good quality
35 citations
TL;DR: An empirical study conducted in the software industry in India addresses total quality management (TQM), ISO 9000, the capability maturity model standards, and the consequent operational-performance indicators of organizations as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: An empirical study conducted in the software industry in India addresses total quality management (TQM), ISO 9000, the capability maturity model standards, and the consequent operational-performance indicators of organizations. Results of the study show..
29 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: A conceptual framework mainly based on Tamil classical literature, for sustaining business with success, in a highly competitive world, is proposed in this paper, where the authors propose a conceptual framework for Tamil TQM.
Abstract: Adoption of total quality management (TQM) is an essential element for the success of business. In spite of many industries implementing TQM, quite a few organizations have eventually lost control of their business. Therefore, something more than TQM adoption is required to face the demanding business world. This work proposes a conceptual framework mainly based on Tamil classical literature, for sustaining business with success, in a highly competitive world.
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a heuristic procedure to derive non-permutation schedules from a given permutation schedule is proposed, where the minimization of total flowtime of jobs is considered as the objective in the first instance, followed by the consideration of the minimisation of total weighted flow time of jobs.
Abstract: The flowline-based manufacturing system (FBMS) is a manufacturing environment wherein machines are arranged in the order in which jobs undergo operations, and jobs have an identical and uni-directional flow pattern. However, some or all jobs may not require processing on some machines. Scheduling of jobs in such a FBMS is considered in this paper with the focus on the development of non-permutation schedules. The significance of non-permutation schedules in improving the schedule performance measures, in the context of FBMS’s, is first brought out. A heuristic procedure to derive non-permutation schedules from a given permutation schedule is subsequently proposed. The minimization of total flowtime of jobs is considered as the objective in the first instance, followed by the consideration of the minimization of total weighted flowtime of jobs. An extensive computational experimentation has been performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed heuristic in improving the performance measures. Further, the performance of the proposed heuristic in generating non-permutation schedules has been compared with that of the benchmark dispatching rules namely, the SPT and SWPT rules.
13 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the role of quality management practices in software firms and investigate whether the age of quality program plays a critical role in influencing the "operational performance" of software firms.
Abstract: This study attempts to investigate the role of quality-management practices in software firms. The attempt probes whether the “age of quality program” plays a critical role in influencing the “operational performance” of software firms. The critical factors of quality-management practices in the software industry as well as the indicators of operational performance are first identified and validated through an empirical study on the basis of responses from software organizations in India. Subsequently, the responses are also used to study the relation between age of quality and operational performance. The results of the study show that the quality management practices, as well as the age-of-quality, influences the operational performance of firms in the case of software industry.
3 citations
01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: In this paper, two ant-colony optimization algorithms are proposed and analyzed for solving the permutation flowshop scheduling problem, with the objective of minimizing the makespan, followed by the consideration of minimization of total flowtime of jobs.
Abstract: The problem of scheduling in permutation flowshops is considered with the objective of minimizing the makespan, followed by the consideration of minimization of total flowtime of jobs. Two ant-colony optimization algorithms are proposed and analyzed for solving the permutation flowshop scheduling problem. The first algorithm extends the ideas of the ant-colony algorithm by Stuetzle [Proceedings of the 6th European Congress on Intelligent Techniques and Soft Computing (EUFIT 98),vol. 3,Verlag Mainz,Aachen,Germany,1998,p. 1560],called max–min ant system (MMAS), by incorporating the summation rule suggested by Merkle and Middendorf [Proceedings of the EvoWorkshops 2000, Lecture Notes in Computer Science No. 1803,Springer-Verlag,Berlin,2000,p. 287] and a newly proposed local search technique. The second ant-colony algorithm is newly developed. The proposed ant-colony algorithms have been applied to 90 benchmark problems taken from Taillard [European Journal of Operational Research 64 (1993) 278]. First,a comparison of the solutions yielded by the MMAS and the two ant-colony algorithms developed in this paper,with the heuristic solutions given by Taillard [European Journal of Operational Research 64 (1993) 278] is undertaken with respect to the minimization of makespan. The comparison shows that the two proposed ant-colony algorithms perform better,on an average,than the MMAS. Subsequently,by considering the objective of minimizing the total flowtime of jobs,a comparison of solutions yielded by the proposed ant-colony algorithms with the best heuristic solutions known for the benchmark problems,as published in an extensive study by Liu and Reeves [European Journal of Operational Research 132 (2001) 439],is carried out. The comparison shows that the proposed ant-colony algorithms are clearly superior to the heuristics analyzed by Liu and Reeves. For 83 out of 90 problems considered,better solutions have been found by the two proposed ant-colony algorithms,as compared to the solutions reported by Liu and Reeves. 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.