Goal programming

About: Goal programming is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4330 publications have been published within this topic receiving 117758 citations.

Tour Scheduling and Task Assignment of a Heterogeneous Work Force: A Heuristic Approach

Abstract: The dual problem of work tour scheduling and task assignment involving workers who differ in their times of availability and task qualifications is examined in this paper. The problem is presented in the context of a fast food restaurant, but applies equally well to a diverse set of service operations. Developing a week-long labor schedule is a nontrivial problem, in terms of complexity and importance, which a manager spends as much as a full workday solving. The primary scheduling objective (the manager's concern) is the minimization of overstaffing in the face of significant hourly and daily fluctuations in minimum staffing requirements. The secondary objective (the workers’ concern) is the minimization of the sum of the squared differences between the number of work hours scheduled and the number targeted for each employee. Contributing to scheduling complexity are constraints on the structure of work tours, including minimum and maximum shift lengths and a maximum number of workdays. A goal programming formulation of a representative problem is shown to be too large, for all practical purposes, to be solved optimally. Existing heuristic procedures related to this research possess inherent limitations which render them inadequate for our purposes. Subsequently, we propose and demonstrate a computerized heuristic procedure capable of producing a labor schedule requiring at most minor refinement by a manager.

Low carbon supply chain configuration for a new product – a goal programming approach

Abstract: Green supply chain management and product innovation both have become sources of competitive advantage for companies from different industries. However, research on the configuration of green supply chains for new products represents a comparably new trend. In this paper, a goal programming approach is suggested to optimise the supply chain (SC) configuration for a new consumer product under consideration of economic and environmental criteria. The approach is illustrated by the case example of a fast moving consumer goods manufacturer. In this context, trade-offs between the ecologic factor of carbon emission, on the one hand, and financial value creation and customer service level on the other hand, are assessed in the deterministic analyses. The influence of long-term demand uncertainties is modelled in a scenario approach. It is observed that decentralised SC configurations enable carbon emission reduction without deteriorating the economic SC performance. Furthermore, it is detected that a focused ec...

Goal programming approach to maintenance scheduling of generating units in large scale power systems

Abstract: This paper presents a goal programming methodology for solving maintenance scheduling of thermal generating units under economic and reliability criteria. The advantages of a multicriteria approach are demonstrated by comparing the effects that costs and reliability have on each other in power plants maintenance scheduling. The problem is formulated as a large scale mixed integer programming problem implemented in the mathematical programming language GAMS and solved using OSL. Weekly maintenance scheduling of the large scale Spanish power system for a year period illustrates the proposed methodology.

Goal Programming Decision Support System for Multiobjective Operation of Reservoir Systems

Abstract: Many authors have documented the minimal use of optimization in practical day-to-day multipurpose reservoir operations. The RiverWare decision support system is a flexible general river basin modeling tool that allows water resources engineers to both simulate and optimize the management of multipurpose reservoir systems for daily operations. This paper describes RiverWare's optimization capabilities and its use by Tennessee Valley Authority operations schedulers. Input data requirements include (1) physical and economic characteristics of the system; (2) prioritized policy goals; and (3) parameters for automatic linearization. RiverWare automatically generates and efficiently solves a multiobjective, preemptive linear goal programming formulation of a reservoir system. An advanced feature of RiverWare is that both the physical model of the river basin and the operating policy are defined and easily modified by the modeler through an interactive graphical user interface. Any modifications are automaticall...