Heuristics, Meta-heuristics and Approximate Methods in Planning and Scheduling

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.

None of the chapters has been previously published in its totality and each chapter offers a contribution to the body of knowledge by presenting new results and insights from applying heuristics, metaheuristics or approximate methods to complex, recent, and diverse problems.

Ghaith Rabadi is Associate Professor at Old Dominion University

in the Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering (EMSE). He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from UCF 1999 and 1996 respectively, and his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Jordan in 1992. Prior to joining the faculty at Old Dominion as an Assistant Professor in 2002, he was a post doc on NASA funded projects for one year and a Visiting Assistant professor at the Industrial Engineering Department at University of Central Florida (UCF) for another year.

He has published 29 journal papers in peer reviewed international journals, 50 peer reviewed conference papers and 4 book chapters. He received theNASA Faculty Fellowship where he worked at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia as a faculty fellow. His research has been funded by NASA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Virginia Port Authority (VPA), Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, MITRE Corporation, STIHL, CACI, Sentara Hospitals and Qatar Foundation. He received the Fulbright Specialist Program award. His research and teaching interests include Planning and Scheduling,Operations Research, Simulation Modeling and Analysis, and Supply Chain Management and Logistics.

He is currently the Chief Editor for the International Journal of Planning and Scheduling.