Automated Scheduling,Optimisation and Planning(ASAP) Research Group

School of Computer Science and IT

Report 1999-2000

Editor : Dr Graham Kendall

Cutting Machine photograph courtesy of Esprit Automation Ltd.

Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning (ASAP)School of Computer Science and Information TechnologyThe University of NottinghamJubilee CampusWollaton RoadNottinghamNG8 1BBUnited Kingdom

URL:http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk

© ASAP 2001

Introduction Page 1

Techniques Page 4

Timetabling and Optime Page 6

Cutting and Packing and Space Allocation Page 7

Personnel Scheduling Page 8

Production Scheduling and Logistics Page 9

Representation of Schedules Page 10

Inter-disciplinary Optimisation Laboratory Page 11

Publications Page 12

External Research Awards 1999-2000 Page 15

Professional Activities and Editorial/Programme Committee Duties (1999 to date) Page 16

Contact Details for ASAP Page 19

ASAP Personnel Page 20

Contents

1

The Automated Scheduling,OptimisAtion and Planning (ASAP)group is one of four main researchgroupings within the School ofComputer Science and InformationTechnology at the University ofNottingham. The group was formed in1996 as part of the (then named)Department of Computer Science’sresearch strategy plan. Research intoscheduling, optimisation and planningwas previously carried out within theMachine Intelligence Group. In the period since 1996 both theresearch group and the School haveseen a significant expansion in terms ofthe number of active researchers and inthe scope of that research activity. In1998 the Department of ComputerScience and the InformationTechnology Institute were broughttogether under one administrative unitto form the School of ComputerScience and Information Technology.In 1999, the School moved from themain campus to the university’s brandnew £50M Jubilee campus.

The ASAP group is (and has alwaysbeen) concerned with investigatingsophisticated models and novelapproaches to difficult real worldscheduling, optimisation and planningproblems. These problems range over avariety of application areas. Theircommon feature is that they representextremely large search spaces. It isimpossible to exhaustively search thesespaces. We are investigating novelapproaches to attempt to search thesespaces to find high quality solutions inas short a period of time as possible.Indeed the trade off between solutionquality and computational time is asignificant feature of the problem areasthat we are concerned with. Twocurrent EPSRC grants, dealing withproduction and dynamic scheduling(GR/M95516) and with case basedapproaches to nurse rostering(GR/N25205) are investigating suchissues. The latter project collaborateswith the School of Nursing and theQueen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham.The commercial and industrialimplications of such issues for stockcutting problems are explored in aproject funded by a DTI TeachingCompany grant with Esprit Automation.

Introduction

Trent Building

Jubilee Campus

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Technology) initiative. The ASAPgroup is also leading an EPSRC funded(GR/R12268/01) inter-disciplinaryscheduling network that is situated inthe Inter-disciplinary Optimisation lab.We also work with the School ofMechanical, Materials, ManufacturingEngineering and Management on casebased approaches to timetablingproblems and applying forecasting andsimulation techniques to optimizeinventory management (TCS 2576).

Since its formation in the mid-ninetiesthe ASAP group has grown to a sizewhere it has 4 academic members ofstaff, 4 Research Assistants, 12 PhDstudents, 2 teaching companyassociates and 2 administrativemembers of staff. The group works in a wide variety of applications from timetabling to production

scheduling and from cutting/packing to protein folding. The ASAP group continues to play aprominent role in the internationalscheduling and optimisation researchcommunities. In particular it plays aleading editorial role in the Journal ofScheduling, The Journal of Heuristicsand the IEEE Transactions onEvolutionary Computation. It plays amajor role in the organisation of theinternational series of conferences onthe Practice and Theory of AutomatedTimetabling. It is also instrumental inthe running of the EURO fundedWorking group on AutomatedTimetabling in addition to leading theEPSRC funded inter-disciplinaryscheduling network.

Over the 1999-2000 period, the grouphas obtained external research awardstotaling over £1.15M from a variety ofsources including almost £1M (£970K)from the research councils(EPSRC,ESRC and BBSRC). Theremainder is from the DTI andindustrial sources. During this 2 yearperiod it has published 8 journal papersand a further 5 journal papers in press,it also published 12 refereedconference papers with further 12 inpress (or to appear). This reportoutlines the group’s main researchactivity over this period.

However, trying to obtain high qualitysolutions to particular problems is notthe only aim in our research strategy.One of our over-riding goals over thenext few years is to attempt to operateat a higher level of generality than iscurrently possible. We currently hold afurther two major EPSRC researchawards which are investigating casebased approaches for generalisingattempts to solve timetablingproblems(GR/N36837/01) and hyper-heuristic methods for a variety ofapplication areas(GR/N36837/01).Hyper-heuristics are concerned withautomating the process of attempting tofind the right method in a givensituation rather than with solving theproblem directly. In addition to theseover-riding goals, the scope of ourresearch continues to widen and wecontinue to explore multi-disciplinarylinks with other research groups.

We have recently been instrumental inthe formation of the Inter-disciplinary

Optimisation Laboratory. This lab isbased upon 5 current externally fundedprojects in addition to the support ofthe University of Nottingham. We arecarrying out collaborative work withthe School of Chemistry to investigatenovel meta-heuristic approaches toprotein folding. This has been fundedby BBSRC/EPSRC under the bio-informatics initiative (42/BIO14458). As mentioned above, we are currentlyfunded by EPSRC to investigate casebased approaches to nurse rostering(GR/N35205 with the School ofNursing and the Queen’s MedicalCentre in Nottingham. We are alsoworking with KaHo in Belgium onmeta-heuristic and hybrid approachesto nurse scheduling problems. Anotherproject with the School of Psychologyexplores the role of representationaldesign in the development ofscheduling systems. This has beenfunded by ESRC/EPSRC under thePACCIT (People At the Centre ofComputing and Information

The ASAP Research Group

Djamila Ouelhadj (PhD Student)

Glenn Whitwell (PhD Student)

ASAP Seminar being presented by Ralf Keuthen

5

IntroductionWithin ASAP we use a variety oftechniques to solve complex problems.The solution methods we utilise anddevelop have their roots in bothoperational research and artificialintelligence. Some of these approachesare outlined below, along with some ofthe application areas that we haveworked in. This list is not exhaustive. Itjust gives an idea of the type oftechniques we investigate and the areaswhere we have used them.

Tabu Search and SimulatedAnnealingUsing a simple search method such ashill climbing is likely to lead to a localoptima. A standard way to attempt toavoid this problem is to employ meta-heuristic approaches (such as tabusearch and simulated annealing). Thesehave the ability to accept worse moves,as well as better moves, to allow themto escape from local optima. We havesuccessfully developed algorithmsbased on this approach in much of thework we do and we frequently adoptsuch methods within hybrid algorithmsin an attempt to generate high qualitysolutions (see, for example, memeticalgorithms).

Genetic AlgorithmsGenetic algorithms (GA’s) are based onDarwin’s principles of naturalevolution. The overall idea is that wemaintain a population of solutions thatevolve by survival of the fittest. This isachieved by assigning a fitness value toeach member of the population thatdetermines the quality of that solution.The fitter members (those of thehighest quality) are the ones mostlikely to survive to the next generation

and be allowed to breed with anothermember of the population. It is hopedthat the breeding process will take thegood genetic material from both of theparents and produce children which, onaverage, are better than their parents.ASAP has successfully developed GA’sand hybrid GA’s for a variety ofproblems including space allocation,cutting and packing, examinationtimetabling and power plantmaintenance scheduling.

Ant AlgorithmsLike genetic algorithms, ant algorithmsdraw their inspiration from biology;this time mimicking the way antsforage for food. It can be observed thatants are able to find the shortest routeto a food source by communicatingwith one another. They do this bydepositing a pheromone trail that canbe detected by other ants that take thesame route. In the mid-1990’s this ideawas developed into a method thatallowed large search spaces to beexplored. It was originally applied tothe traveling salesman problem and haslatterly been applied to many otherproblem domains, including vehiclerouting, quadratic assignment andfacility layout.ASAP is investigating this approach forcutting and packing problems.

Memetic AlgorithmsBoth genetic algorithms and antalgorithms are examples of populationbased approaches where a number ofsolutions are maintained and there issome exchange between the variousmembers of that population in anattempt to produce better qualityindividuals in the next generation.Other search techniques (such as hill

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climbing, simulated annealing and tabusearch) only maintain a single solutionat any one time and attempt to improveon that solution in small (usually)steps. The idea behind memeticalgorithms is that a population basedapproach search mechanism iscombined with a local search approachso that members of the population canbe taken to a local optima before thenext generation is produced.

Variable Neighborhood SearchLocal search heuristics tend to use thesame neighbourhood structure whenexploring the search space. VariableNeighbourhood Search (VNS) isdesigned to overcome some of thelimitations of these search methods bychanging the neighbourhood structureas the search progresses. In its simplestform VNS will have a number ofneighbourhood structures defined and the search will cycle throughthose neighbourhood structures,applying a local search operator at eachstage. When each neighbourhoodstructure has reached a local optima,the search will move onto the nextneighbourhood structure.We have investigated VNS forproblems such as the traveling salesmanproblem and component placementwhen assembling circuit boards.

Case Based ReasoningCase based reasoning (CBR) is amethodology that draws someinspiration from human reasoning.Humans often adopt an approach toproblem solving where they remembera previous case of a similar problemand adapt that approach to suit thecurrent problem. A CBR approachstores a case base of known problems.When a new problem is presented, asimilar case is retrieved from theknowledge base and used as a startingpoint to solve the current problem.ASAP have successfully developedCBR approaches for educationaltimetabling and personnel schedulingand are conducting research to applythis method to other problem domains.

Hyper-heuristicsA hyper-heuristic denotes a heuristicthat selects heuristics for a wide varietyof problems. Note that this differs fromthe widely used term meta-heuristicwhich usually refers to a heuristicwhich manages one other heuristic fora particular problem. A hyper-heuristiccan be thought of as a heuristic tochoose heuristics. Of course, meta-heuristics can be used as hyper-heuristics. It may also be the case thata hyper-heuristic chooses from a rangeof heuristics, meta-heuristics andhybrids. The main idea is to try anddesign an algorithm that will choosethe right algorithm to carry out acertain task in a certain situation.There are a number of research issuesthat need to be tackled. In particular,we need to investigate and analysewhat methods may or may not besuccessful as hyper-heuristics and weneed to investigate the use of“knowledge poor” algorithms on arange of problems.

Techniques

Ibrahim Osman, Visiting Speaker

Cutting and PackingCutting and packing problems presentthemselves in a number of ways. Onedimensional problems (such as cuttinglengths from steel rods) have beenstudied since the 1940’s. Twodimensional problems, such as cuttingsheet metal using a CNC (ComputerNumerical Control) cutting machine,and three dimensional problems, suchas pallet loading, have also beenheavily researched in the past 50 years.ASAP has devoted most of its energiesin this area to two dimensionalproblems, with the emphasis being onsolving real world problems. Wecurrently work with Esprit AutomationLtd. They manufacture cuttingmachines and supply a softwarepackage that allows their customers toproduce “nests” that minimize thewaste when cutting out a number ofshapes from metal sheets. A TCS(Teaching Company Scheme) award isallowing us to transfer our researchinto this commercial product.

We are incorporating some of the latestArtificial Intelligence and OperationalResearch techniques to produce betterquality nests in shorter times. Alongsidethis grant, EPSRC have also awarded aCASE project (supported by EspritAutomation Ltd.) which fundscontinuing research in this area.

Space AllocationOur research into space allocationproblems concentrates on thedevelopment of advanced techniques,including local search methods, meta-heuristics, evolutionary algorithmsand multi-criteria decision making.Such problems are many and varied(e.g. office space allocation, shoplayouts etc.) Our aim is to develop acomprehensive study of this class ofproblem, obtain complete models andproduce a robust framework toprovide high quality solutions for thedifferent variants of the spaceallocation problem.

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The ASAP group is internationallyrecognised for its work on timetablingand timetabling related problems.Over the period of this report the grouphas developed a decompositionapproach to examination timetablingwhich has produced results onbenchmark problems which are betterthan previously published results. Thiswork was presented in a paper in theIEEE Transactions on EvolutionaryComputation in 1999. The group isalso exploring multi-objectiveapproaches to examination timetabling.This work was presented at the recentPATAT conference (see below).

ASAP’s research into examinationtimetabling has led to the developmentof a commercial exam timetablingsoftware package called Optime. Thissystem is currently in use in severalUK universities and is being marketedby the commercial arm of theUniversity of Nottingham. Moredetails about the system can be seen athttp://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/optime/

Examination timetabling, however, isnot the only focus of our research. Weare currently exploring case basedapproaches to course timetabling. Apaper that presents our key results inthe field first appeared in theproceedings of the 19th International

Conference on Knowledge BasedSystems and Applied ArtificialIntelligence. It won an award for beingone of the six best technical papers atthis conference. As a winner of theaward it also appeared in KnowledgedBased Systems in 2000.In addition to our research in this area,the ASAP group has played a leadingrole in the development of thetimetabling research community.ASAP has been a major contributor inthe organisation of the internationalseries of conferences on the Practiceand Theory of Automated Timetabling(PATAT). These conferences have beenheld in Edinburgh (1995), Toronto(1997) and Konstanz (2000). The nextone will be held in Gent in 2002. Avolume of selected papers from eachconference is published by Springer.More details about the PATATconferences can be found athttp://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/patat/patat-index.shtml

The ASAP group was also instrumentalin obtaining funding from EURO (TheEuropean Association of OperationalResearch Societies) to set up aWorking group on AutomatedTimeTabling (WATT) in 1996. Sincethen, the group has gone from strengthto strength and currently has over 220members worldwide. Seehttp://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/watt/index.html for more information about theWATT group. The 2001 WATTworkshop will have an associatedspecial issue of the European Journalof Operational Research onTimetabling and Rostering. Thisspecial issue is being guest edited bytwo members of the ASAP group.

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Cutting & Packing and Space AllocationTimetabling and Optime

Optime Screen shot

Screen Shot of Rectangle Packing

Cutting Machine from Esprit

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The ASAP group is carrying out workwhich is oriented toward thedevelopment of new methodologies for personnel scheduling. The mainaim of these methods is to provide high quality solutions to scheduling in terms of the requirements ofinstitutions, resource utilisation andpersonnel preferences.

EPSRC has funded research on nursescheduling problems which is beingcarried out in collaboration with theQueen’s Medical Centre and the Schoolof Nursing within the University ofNottingham. Nurse scheduling requiresthe balancing of different grades ofstaff and varying workloads. A newcase-based reasoning approach is underdevelopment which aims to efficientlyreflect the way that personnel managerssolve real-world scheduling problemsin modern health care institutions usingknowledge and experience gained insolving past scheduling problems.

ASAP has established collaborationswith a number of academic institutionsaround the world. In particular, thegroup works on the development ofnurse scheduling algorithms withKaHo St.-Lieven, in Gent, Belgium.Such research work has provided thebasis of a commercial package Planewhich is in wide use in hospitals inBelgium. This work on real-worldscheduling problems has shown thatautomatically produced personnelschedules have a much higher level ofquality than the manually producedones because they can take intoconsideration a higher number ofpersonnel preferences and enable equaltreatment of all the personnel.

We believe that new approaches toautomated scheduling developed within the group will enable fasterconstruction of personnel schedules,will enhance flexibility in personnelscheduling and will significantlycontribute to the job satisfaction of personnel.

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Production SchedulingManufacturing industries continue tocome under increasing internationalpressure to produce goods to higherquality specifications whilst reducingcosts. An important tool in keepingdown production costs whilstimproving quality has been thedevelopment of computerised decision support systems to provideimproved schedules.

The ASAP group remains at theforefront of research in production scheduling in a number of applicationareas. In electronics assembly, heuristictechniques based on ideas of VariableNeighbourhood Search have been usedto generate schedules which reduce thetime required by the moving headwhich picks electronic components andplaces them on a Printed Circuit Board.

Systems have been developed to allowthe integration of steel continuouscaster and hot strip mill schedules, inconjunction with A. I. Systems BV,Belgium. The EPSRC has funded aninvestigation into methods forsuccessfully rescheduling amanufacturing system in response toproduction failures or customerchanges in order specification, where amulti-agent distributed schedulingapproach shows considerable promise.

LogisticsThe group has successfully appliedsimilar heuristic techniques to thoseused to find an optimised sequence ofcomponents in electronicsmanufacturing and to find an optimisedsequence of cities in problems ofrouting vehicles. Together with a localcompany (Meads Ltd.) and the Schoolof Mechanical, Materials,Manufacturing Engineering andManagement, we are conductingresearch into ways of managing a largeinventory so as to reduce overall costs,by applying forecasting, simulation andoptimisation techniques to findoptimised reorder quantities andreorder levels for an inventory of over2000 bulky items.

Production Scheduling and LogisticsPersonnel Scheduling

Queens Medical Centre Delivery Lorries

The Elements of Component Placement

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The University of Nottingham hasrecently established the Inter-disciplinary Optimisation laboratorylocated within the School of ComputerScience and IT. It is being directed byProf Burke and its main aim is toprovide a focus for a variety of inter-disciplinary themes that are beingcarried out by the ASAP group inconjunction with researchers fromother disciplines within the university.We currently hold external researchawards with the Schools of Chemistry,Mechanical, Materials, ManufacturingEngineering and Management, Nursingand Psychology. Projects currentlybeing carried out within the laboratoryrepresent external funding of over£600K from EPSRC, BBSRC, ESRCand the DTI. The projects currentlysituated in the lab are as follows(additional details on the grantsawarded since 1999 can be found onpage 15)

• A Hybrid Meta-heuristic Approachto Simplified Sequence-Structure-Function Problems

• Representational design principlesto humanise automated systems

• Case Based Reasoning inPersonnel Rostering

• Tools for Inventory Managementin a Complex Supply Chain

• Case Based Reasoning forScheduling

• Interdisciplinary SchedulingNetwork

The lab is based on the new JubileeCampus and provides a framework andsupportive environment in which tobuild on research collaborations in bio-

informatics, scheduling, design andcognitive engineering.

The main objectives are to: • Help to formulate a programme of

inter-disciplinary research aimed atdeveloping novel and adventurousapproaches to a range ofoptimisation research.

• Support the integration ofemerging technologies withoptimisation processes.

• Cross-fertilise approaches tooptimisation from differentdisciplines.

• Raise the awareness of industry,commerce, the service sector andthe general public to the benefitsavailable from improvedintelligence in optimisation.

• Create a framework in which highrisk and high gain research intooptimisation and related areas canbe evaluated objectively andcarried out in a supportive,interdisciplinary environment.

• Improve the integration ofscientific research and industrialand commercial practice.

The Inter-Disciplinary Optimisation Laboratory

Understanding a schedule is acognitively challenging task. We havebeen funded by the ESRC/EPSRCPeople At the Centre ofCommunications and InformationTechnologies (PACCIT) programme toconduct research into how advancedheuristics for optimisation andrepresentational design tools can beintegrated to present schedules in sucha way as to facilitate the understandingof the user and allow the generation ofmore practically useful schedules.

This project is being carried out jointlywith the CREDIT group of the Schoolof Psychology. The user employsheuristic and representationaltechniques to evaluate schedules using

visual cues such as colour and shapemore readily than would be possiblewith more traditional representations.Integration with the hyperheuristicapproaches discussed in detailelsewhere will allow the user toleverage human knowledge as to whatconstitutes a good schedule and whatapproaches are likely to improve agiven schedule, by allowing humanintervention in steering the heuristic toa good solution. In addition, capturingthe heuristic choices of an expert userallows us to simulate expert behaviourusing automated approaches.

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Representation of Schedules

Different Ways of Representing a Schedule

Screenshot: Schedule Representation

Naimah Hussin (PhD Student)

Rong Qu (Research Assistant)

Coenen, Springer, 1999, 191-203. • E.K. Burke and A.J. Smith, “Hybrid Evolutionary Techniques for the Maintenance Scheduling

Problem, “ the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Volume 15 Number 1, February 2000,pages 122-128, ISSN 0885-8950.

1999

• E.K. Burke and G. Kendall, Comparison of Meta-Heuristic Algorithms for ClusteringRectangles, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 37, Iss. 1-2, October 1999, pp 383-386,Elsevier.

• Petrovic, S., Classification of Objects Based on Case-Based Reasoning, Yugoslav Journal ofOperations Research Vol.9, No 1., 1999, pp. 75-95.

• E.K. Burke and J.P. Newall, A Multi-Stage Evolutionary Algorithm for the Timetable Problem,the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Vol 3.1, pp. 63-74, April 1999.

• E.K.Burke and A.J.Smith, A Memetic Algorithm to Schedule Planned Maintenance, ACMJournal of Experimental Algorithmics Vol. 4, No. 1 (1999), 1084-6654.

Refereed Conference Papers

In press and to appear

• Kendall, G., Binner, J. and Gazely, A.. Evolutionary Strategies - A New Macroeconomic PolicyTool? Accepted for IFAC Symposium on Modeling and Control of Economic Systems SME2001 in Klagenfurt, Austria, September 6-8, 2001.

• E.K. Burke, Y. Bykov, Petrovic, S., A Multicriteria Approach to Examination Timetabling.Accepted for publication in volume of selected papers from the 3rd International Conference onthe Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2000), Springer, 2001 (ISBN 3-540-42421-0).

• Burke E.K., P. Cowling P., Landa Silva J.D. and McCollum B. Three Methods to Automate theSpace Allocation Process in UK Universities. Accepted for publication in volume of selectedpapers from the 3rd International Conference on the Practice and Theory of AutomatedTimetabling (PATAT 2000), Springer, 2001 (ISBN 3-540-42421-0).

• Cowling P., Kendall G., Soubeiga E., A Hyperheuristic Approach to Scheduling a Sales Summit.Accepted for publication in volume of selected papers from the 3rd International Conference onthe Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2000), Springer, 2001 (ISBN 3-540-42421-0).

• E.K.Burke, B.MacCarthy, S.Petrovic and R.Qu., Case-Based Reasoning in Course Timetabling:An Attribute Graph Appraoch. Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 4th.International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, ICCBR-2001, Vancouver, Canada, 30 July -2 August 2001. Springer, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (publication date July 2001).

• E.K. Burke, P. Cowling, J.D. Landa Silva, S. Petrovic, Combining Hybrid Metaheuristics andPopulations for the Multiobjective Optimisation of Space Allocation Problems. Accepted forpublication in the Proceedings of the GECCO 2001, Genetic and Evolutionary ComputationConference 2001, San Francisco, USA, 7-11 July 2001.

• Kendall, G., Binner, J. and Gazely, A.. Evolutionary Strategies vs. Neural Networks; NewEvidence from Taiwan on the Divisia Index Debate. Accepted for 7th International Conferenceof the Society for Computational Economics, Yale University, June 28-30, 2001.

• Kendall, G., Binner, J. and Gazely, A.. Evolutionary Strategies vs. Neural Networks: AnInflation Forecasting Experiment. Accepted for IC-AI’2001 (International Conference onArtificial Intelligence), June 25-28, 2001, Monte Carlo Resort & Casino, 3770 Las VegasBlvd.,South, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

• Kendall, G. and Whitwell, G., An Evolutionary Approach for the Tuning of a Chess EvaluationFunction using Population Dynamics. Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of theCEC2001 (Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2001), COEX Center, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001.

• E.K. Burke, P. Cowling, J.D. Landa Silva, Hybrid Population-Based Metaheuristic Approachesfor the Space Allocation Problem. Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the CEC2001,Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2001, Seoul, Korea, 27-30 May 2001.

• Burke, E., De Causmaecker, P., Petrovic, Vanden Berghe, G., Fitness Evaluation for Nurse

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Journals (Editorships/Associate Editorships)

• E.K.Burke : Editor-in-chief, The Journal of Scheduling, Wiley, published bi-monthly. • E.K. Burke : Area Editor (for Combinatorial Optimisation) of The Journal of Heuristics

(published by Kluwer).• E.K. Burke : Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation. • E.K. Burke and S. Petrovic : Guest Co-editors of a feature issue of the European Journal of

Operational Research (EJOR ) on “Timetabling and Rostering”.

Books

• E.K. Burke and W. Erben, Selected Papers from the 3rd “International Conference Practice andTheory of Automated Timetabling”, Konstanz, August 16th-18th, Springer Verlag (to appear)(ISBN 3-540-42421-0).

• Lee Spector, Erik D. Goodman, Annie Wu, W.B Langdon, Hans-Michael Voigt, Mitsuo Gen,Sandip Sen, Marco Dorigo, Shahram Pezeshk, Max H. Garzon and Edmund Burke (editors),Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2001), SanFrancisco, USA, July 7-11 2001 (ISBN 1-55860-774-9).

• E.K. Burke and W. Erben, Full Proceedings of the 3rd “International Conference Practice andTheory of Automated Timetabling”, Konstanz, August 16th-18th, published by theFachhochshule Konstanz, University of Applied Sciences, Germany (ISBN 3-00-003866-3).

Book Chapters

• P.I. Cowling, Design and Implementation of an Effective Decision Support System: A CaseStudy in Steel Hot Rolling Mill Scheduling. In: Human Performance in Planning andScheduling, eds. B.L. MacCarthy and J.R. Wilson, Taylor Francis, 2000.

Journal Papers

In press and to appear

• Petrovic,S., Petrovic, R. “A New Fuzzy Multicriteria Methodology for Ranking of Alternatives”accepted for publication in International Transactions in Operational Research - ITOR.

• Ward C.R., Gobet F., Kendall G., Evolving Collective Behavior in an Artificial Ecology,Accepted for publication in Artificial Life special issue on “Evolution of Sensors in Nature,Hardware and Simulation”.

• E.K.Burke, P.I.Cowling, P.De Causmaecker and G.Vanden Berghe, A Memetic Approach to theNurse Rostering Problem, accepted for publication in Applied Intelligence, Kluwer, 2001.

• P.I. Cowling, M. Johansson, Using real time information for effective dynamic scheduling,accepted for publication in the European Journal of Operational Research.

• P.I. Cowling, A Flexible Decision Support System for Steel Hot Rolling Mill Scheduling,accepted for publication in Computers and Industrial Engineering.

2000

• P.I. Cowling, On the Total Chromatic Number of Steiner Systems, Journal of CombinatorialMathematics and Combinatorial Computing, Vol. 35, November 2000, pp. 51-64.

• P.I. Cowling, W. Rezig, Integration of Continuous Caster and Hot Strip Mill Planning for SteelProduction, Journal of Scheduling, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp 185-208, 2000.

• E.K.Burke, B.MacCarthy, S.Petrovic and R.Qu, Structured Cases in CBR: Re-using andAdapting Cases for Timetabling Problems, Knowledge-Based Systems 13,April 2000, pp. 159-165, 2000. The paper is selected as one of the best six technical papers on the 19th SGESInternational Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence,Cambridge, and appears in the Proceedings of the Conference (Eds.) M.Bramer, A. Macintosh, F.

Publications

Title: Interdisciplinary SchedulingNetwork (£62,985)

Principal Investigator: E.K.BurkeOther Investigators: P.I.Cowling,S.Petrovic and G.KendallCollaborators: 18 UK Universities acrossmany disciplinesFunding Body: EPSRC(ref:GR/R12268/01)Awarded: January 2001

A Hybrid Meta-heuristic Approach toSimplified Sequence-Structure-FunctionProblems (£134,844)

Principal Investigator (Chemistry):J.HirstPrincipal Investigator (Computer Scienceand IT): E.K.BurkeOther Investigators: P.I.Cowling,S.Petrovic and G.KendallFunding Bodies: BBSRC/EPSRC (Bio-informatics initiative) (ref:42/BIO14458)Awarded: November 2000Notes: This is a joint project between theSchool of Computer Science and IT and theSchool of Chemistry, Nottingham.

Applying Meta-heuristics and Hyper-heuristics to Stock Cutting (£28,920from EPSRC, £13,200 from Esprit)

Principal Investigator: G. KendallFunding Body: EPSRC and EspritAutomation Limited (ref:CNA 00802329)Awarded: September 2000Notes: This is a CASE (Co-operativeAwards in Science and Engineering) forNew Academics Award

An Investigation of HyperheuristicMethods (£196,343 to Nottingham,£256,547 to Napier)

Principal Investigator (Nottingham):E.K.BurkePrincipal Investigator (Napier): P.RossOther Investigators (Nottingham):P.I.Cowling, S.Petrovic and G.Kendall Other Investigator (Napier): E. Hart Funding Body: EPSRC(ref:GR/N36837/01)Awarded: October 2000Notes: This is a joint project between theUniversity of Nottingham and NapierUniversity.

Representational Design Principles toHumanise Automated Systems (£264,650)

Principal Investigator (Psychology):P.Cheng Principal Investigator (Computer Scienceand IT): P.I.CowlingOther Investigators: E.K.Burke andB.McCollum. Funding Body: ESRC and EPSRC - PeopleAt the Centre of Communication andInformation Technologies (PACCIT)programme (ref:L328253012)Awarded: June 2000Notes: This is a joint project between theSchool of Computer Science and IT and theSchool of Psychology, Nottingham

Case Based Reasoning in PersonnelRostering (£58,684)

Principal Investigator: S.PetrovicOther Investigators: E.K.Burke andP.Cowling. Funding Body: EPSRC (ref:GR/N35205)Awarded: October 2000Notes: This is a joint project between theSchool of Computer Science and IT, theQueens Medical Centre, Nottingham andthe School of Nursing, Nottingham.

New Approaches to Produce EfficientNesting Patterns (£86,268 from DTI,£40,400 from Esprit)

Lead Academic: E.K.BurkeAcademic Supervisor: G.KendallOther investigators: P.Cowling andS.PetrovicFunding Body: DTI (Teaching Company)and Esprit Automation Ltd (ref:TCS 3047)Awarded: March 2000

Using Real Time Information forEffective Dynamic Scheduling (£48,939from EPSRC, £43,500 from DASHAssociates)

Principal Investigator: P. CowlingOther investigators: E.K.Burke, S.PetrovicFunding Body: EPSRC and DASHAssociates (ref:GR/M95516)Awarded: December 1999

A Case Based Approach to HeuristicSelection for Timetabling (£190,545)

Principal Investigator: E.K.BurkeOther investigators: S.Petrovic, P.CowlingFunding Body: EPSRC (ref:GR/N36837/01)Awarded: October 1999

External Research Awards 1999-2000

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Scheduling Problems. Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the Congress onEvolutionary Computation - CEC, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001.

• E.K. Burke, P. Cowling, R. Keuthen, Effective Local and Guided Variable Neighborhood SearchMethods for the Asymmetric Travelling Salesman Problem. Accepted for publication in theProceedings of the First European Workshop on Evolutionary Computation in CombinatorialOptimization EvoCOP2001 (published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Scienceseries) to be held at Lake Como (Milan), Italy, April 18, 2001.

2000

• P.I. Cowling, D. Ouelhadj, S. Petrovic, Multi-Agent Systems for Dynamic Scheduling, in MaxGaragnani (ed) Proceedings of the Nineteenth Workshop of the UK, Planning and SchedulingSpecial Interest Group (PLANSIG 2000), The Open University, UK, 14-15th December 2000,pp.45-54.

• E.K. Burke, P. Cowling, J.D. Landa Silva, B. McCollum, D. Varley, A Computer Based Systemfor Space Allocation Optimisation, in Proceedings of the ICC&IE 2000, The 27th InternationalConference on Computers and Industrial Engineering, Beijing, China, 11-13 October 2000, CDISBN 7-900043-38-1.

• E.K. Burke, S. Petrovic., A Vision of the Future of Automated Timetabling, presented within theSemi-plenary sessions at the 17th European Conference on Operational Research, EURO XVII,Budapest, Hungary, July 16-19, 2000, pp.25-27.

• E.K. Burke, P.I. Cowling, R. Keuthen, Effective Heuristic and Metaheuristic Approaches toOptimize Component Placement in Printed Circuit Board Assembly, in Proceedings of theConference on Evolutionary Computing (CEC2000), San Diego, USA, July 2000, pp. 301-308,IEEE Press.

1999

• E.K. Burke and G. Kendall, Evaluation of Two Dimensional Bin Packing Problem using the NoFit Polygon, Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Computers and IndustrialEngineering, Melbourne, Australia, 15-17 December 1999, pp 286-291.

• E.K. Burke and G. Kendall, Applying Ant Algorithms and the No Fit Polygon to the NestingProblem, Proceedings of 12th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Sydney,Australia, 6-10 December 1999, Lecture Notes in Artifcial Intelligence (Vol. 1747), Foo, N.(Ed), pp 453-464.

• E.K. Burke, P. I. Cowling and R. Keuthen, New Models and Heuristics for ComponentPlacement in Printed Circuit Board Assembly Proceedings of the IEEE International Conferenceon Information, Intelligence and Systems(ICIIS99), 31th October – 3 November 1999,Rockville, Maryland, pp. 133-140, IEEE Press.

• E.K. Burke and G. Kendall, Applying Simulated Annealing and the No Fit Polygon to theNesting Problem”, Proceedings of WMC ‘99 : World Manufacturing Congress, Durham, UK,27-30 September, 1999, pp 70-76.

• E.K. Burke and A.J. Smith, “A Multi-Stage Approach for the Thermal Generator MaintenanceScheduling Problem” Proceedings of Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC’99), Volume2, Washington DC, USA, 6-9 July 1999, pp. 1085-1092, IEEE Press.

• E.K. Burke and G. Kendall, Applying Evolutionary Algorithms and the No Fit Polygon to theNesting Problem, in proceedings of IC-AI’99 : The 1999 International Conference on ArtificialIntelligence, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 28 June - 1 July 1999, pp 51-57.

• P.I. Cowling, A Flexible Semi-Automatic System for Hot Rolling Mill Planning, Proceedings ofthe 25th International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering (ICCIE), NewOrleans, U.S.A., March 1999, pp. 87-90.

• E.K. Burke and A.J. Smith, “A Memetic Algorithm to Schedule Grid Maintenance”, Proceedingsof the International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling Control andAutomation, Vienna, Evolutionary Computation and Fuzzy Logic for Intelligent Control,Knowledge Adquisition and Information Retrieval, Vienna, pp. 122-127, IOS Press., 17-19February 1999.

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• Member of Program Committee of the 2000 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference(GECCO) , July 8-12 2000, in Las Vegas, USA.

• Member of Program Committee of the III International Conference on “Distributed ComputerCommunication Networks”(DCCN-99), Tel Aviv, Israel 9th-13th November 1999.

• Member of Program Committee of the EURO PRIME I Conference, 11th-14th September 1999,Warsaw, Poland.

• Member of Program Committee of the 2nd International Conference on Parallel ComputingSystems PCS’99, August 16-20, 1999, Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico.

• Member of Program Committee of the 1999 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference(GECCO), July 13-17 1999, in Orlando, Florida, USA.

• Member of Program Committee of the 1999 Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC’99),July 6th-9th 1999, Washington D.C., USA and co-organiser of a special session on scheduling.

P.I.Cowling

• Member of the Editorial Board and Book/Software Review Coordinator for the Journal ofScheduling (published by Wiley).

• Member of the Programme Committee of the 4th PATAT conference to be held in Ghent inAugust 2002. A selected papers volume will be published by Springer in their Lecture Notes inComputer Science (LNCS) series.

• Member of the Program Committee of the 2001 Genetic and Evolutionary ComputationConference (GECCO-2001), July 7-11 2001, in San Francisco, USA. Co-organised a workshop(with Graham Kendall) entitled “The Next Ten Years of Scheduling Research” at the sameconference.

• Member of Programme Committee of the First European Workshop on EvolutionaryComputation in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP-2001), Milan, Italy, 18th-20th April,2001. Proceedings are published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science(LNCS) series.

• Member of the Technical Committee of the Congress of Evolutionary Computation (CEC-2000),July 16-19, San Diego, USA and co-organiser of a special session on scheduling.

• Member of the Programme Committee for the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling2000 (PATAT2000) conference, August 16-19, Konstanz, Germany. Selected Papers will bepublished by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

• Member of the Programme Committee for the Parallel Computing Systems 1999 (PCS’99)conference, August 16-20 1999, Ensenada, Mexico.

• Member of the Programme Committee for the Sixth Parallel Problem Solving from Nature(PPSN VI) conference, September 16-20 2000, Paris, France. The proceedings are published bySpringer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

• Member of Program Committee of the 1999 Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC’99),July 6th-9th 1999, Washington D.C., USA.

17

E.K.Burke

• Member of the EPSRC Peer Review College (2000-2002).

• Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Scheduling (published by Wiley).

• Area Editor (for Combinatorial Optimisation) of The Journal of Heuristics (published byKluwer).

• Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.

• Guest Co-editor of a feature issue of the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR ) on“Timetabling and Rostering”.

• Chairman of the Organising Committee and Co-ordinator of the EURO Working group onAutomated TimeTabling (WATT).

• Chairman of the Steering Committee of the international series of conferences on the Practiceand Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT).

• Co-chair of the Programme Committee of the 4th PATAT conference to be held in Ghent inAugust 2002, co-editor of a full proceedings (to appear) and co-editor of a selected papersvolume which will be published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science(LNCS) series.

• Co-chair of the Programme Committee of the 3rd PATAT conference held in Konstanz in August2000, co-editor of the full proceedings and co-editor of a volume of Selected Papers which willagain be published by Springer in the LNCS series (volume 2079).

• Chairman of the Special Program Committee on Evolutionary Scheduling and Routing of the2001 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2001), July 7-11 2001, inSan Francisco, USA.

• Member of Program Committee of the Seventh Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSNVII) Conference, September 2002, Granada, Spain.

• Member of Programme Committee of the 2002 Congress on Evolutionary Computation(CEC2002), Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, May 12th-17th.

• Member of Programme Committee of the 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Simulated EvolutionAnd Learning SEAL 2002, Singapore, November 18-22, 2002.

• Member of Program Committee of the 4th Metaheuristics International Conference MIC 2001,Porto, Portugal, July 16-20, 2001.

• Member of the Technical Committee of the Congress of Evolutionary Computation (CEC-2001),COEX Center, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001 and a co-organiser of a special session onscheduling.

• Member of Programme Committee of the First European Workshop on EvolutionaryComputation in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP-2001), Milan, Italy, 18th-20th April,2001. Proceedings are published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science(LNCS) series.

• Member of Programme Committee for the 19th UK Planning and Scheduling SIG Workshop,Milton Keynes, UK, 13th-14th December 2000.

• Member of Program Committee of the Sixth Parallel Problem Solving from Nature PPSN VIConference, September 2000, Paris, France.

• Member of the Technical Committee of the Congress of Evolutionary Computation (CEC-2000),July 16-19, San Diego, USA and co-organiser of a special session on scheduling.

Professional Activities and Editorial / ProgrammeCommittee Duties (1999 to date)

16

19

Contact Details for ASAPG.Kendall

• Member of the Program Committee of the 4th Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC2001), Porto, Portugal, July 16-20, 2001.

• Co-organised a workshop (with Peter Cowling) entitled “The Next Ten Years of SchedulingResearch”) at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2001), SanFrancisco, California, USA, July 7-11, 2001.

• Member of the Program Committee of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence(IC-AI’2001), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, June 25-28, 2001.

• Member of the Technical Committee of the Congress of Evolutionary Computation (CEC-2001),COEX Center, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001 and co-organiser of a special session onscheduling.

S.Petrovic

• Guest Co-editor of a feature issue of the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR ) on“Timetabling and Rostering”.

• Member of the Programme Committee for the 4th international conference on the Practice andTheory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2002), to be held in Ghent, August 2002.

• Stream Chair for Scheduling and Timetabling in the Sixteenth Triennial Conference of theInternational Federation of Operational Research Societies, IFORS 2002, to be held inEdinburgh, 8 - 12 July, 2002.

• Member of the scientific program committee of the International Conference on DecisionMaking and Decision Support in the Internet Age (DSI-Age 2002), An IFIP TC8/WG 8.3 OpenConference, University College Cork (Cork, Ireland) 4th-7th July 2002.

• Member of the Program Committee of the 2001 Genetic and Evolutionary ComputationConference (GECCO-2001), July 7-11 2001, in San Fransisco, USA.

• Member of the Technical Committee of the Congress of Evolutionary Computation (CEC-2001),Seoul, Korea, May 27th-30th, 2001.

• Member of the Programme Committee for the 3rd international conference on the Practice andTheory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2000), held at the Fachhochschule Konstanz, 16th-18th August 2000.

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ASAP AddressSchool Of Computer Science & ITUniversity of NottinghamJubilee CampusWollaton Road,NottinghamNG8 1BB, UK

Academic StaffProfessor Edmund Burke (Group Leader)Professor of Computer ScienceTel : +44 (0) 115 951 4206Fax +44 (0) 115 951 4249EMAIL : ekb@cs.nott.ac.ukWWW : http://cs.nott.ac.uk/~ekb

Dr Peter CowlingReader in Computer ScienceTel : +44 (0) 115 951 4215Fax +44 (0) 115 951 4249EMAIL : pic@cs.nott.ac.ukWWW : http://cs.nott.ac.uk/~pic

Dr Graham KendallLecturerTel : +44 (0) 115 846 6514Fax +44 (0) 115 951 4249EMAIL : gxk@cs.nott.ac.ukWWW : http://cs.nott.ac.uk/~gxk

Dr Sanja PetrovicLecturerTel : +44 (0) 115 951 4222Fax +44 (0) 115 951 4249EMAIL : sxp@cs.nott.ac.ukWWW : http://cs.nott.ac.uk/~sxp

Administrative StaffMrs Diana French (ASAP Group Secretary)Tel : +44 (0) 115 846 6522Fax +44 (0) 115 951 4249EMAIL : dxf@cs.nott.ac.uk

Miss Alison Payne (Secretary to Prof. Burke)Tel : +44 (0) 115 951 4246Fax +44 (0) 115 951 4249EMAIL : alp@cs.nott.ac.uk

ASAP Web Sitehttp://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/

2120

Mr Yuri Bykov Mr Adam Eckersley Mr Steven Gustafson Ms Limin Han

PhD Students

Ms Naimah Hussin Mr Ralf Keuthen Mr J Dario LandaSilva

Ms Djamila Ouelhadj

Mr Eric Soubeiga Ms Irena Spasic Mr Glenn Whitwell Mr Yong Yang

ASAP Personnel

Professor EdmundBurke

Dr Peter Cowling Dr Graham Kendall Dr Sanja Petrovic

Academic Staff

Mrs Diana French Miss Alison Payne

Administrative Staff

Dr Samad Ahmadi Mr Rossano Barrone Dr Jim Newall Ms Rong Qu

Research Staff

Mr David Buxton Mr Rob Hellier

Teaching Company Associates