Evaluating appointment postponement in scheduling patients at a diagnostic clinic

Diagnostic clinics are among healthcare facilities that suffer from long waiting times which can worsen medical outcomes and increase patient no-shows. Reducing waiting times without significant capital investments is a challenging task. We tackle this challenge by proposing a new appointment scheduling policy that does not require significant investments for diagnostic clinics. The clinic in our study serves outpatients, inpatients, and emergency patients. Emergency patients must be seen on arrival, and inpatients must be given next day appointments. Outpatients, however, can be given later appointments. The proposed policy takes advantage of this by allowing the postponement of the acceptance of appointment requests from outpatients. The appointment scheduling process is modeled as a two-stage stochastic programming problem where a portion of the clinic capacity is allocated to inpatients and emergency patients in the first stage. In the second stage, outpatients are scheduled based on their priority classes. After a detailed analysis of the solutions obtained from the two-stage stochastic model, we develop a simple, non-anticipative policy for patient scheduling. We evaluate the performance of this proposed, easy-to-implement policy in a simulation study which shows significant improvements in outpatient indirect waiting times.     

Scheduling twin robots on a line

This article introduces the twin robots scheduling problem (TRSP), in which two robots positioned at the opposite ends of a rail are required to deliver items to positions along the rail, and the objective is to minimize the makespan. A proof of ‐hardness of the TRSP is presented, along with exact and heuristic algorithms. Computational results on challenging instances are provided.Copyright © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 119–130, 2014     

Maintenance scheduling for modular systems: Modeling and algorithms

We study new models of scheduled maintenance management for modular systems, consisting of multiple components with respective cycle limits. The cycle limit of each component specifies the time interval in which this component must be repaired or replaced. The goal is to compute a feasible maintenance schedule that minimizes the cost associated with component maintenance. Applications of these models arise in Air Force aircraft maintenance as well as in other arenas with required preventive maintenance. The typical cost structures that arise in practical settings are submodular, which make the resulting models computationally challenging. We develop two efficient and operationally tenable approximation algorithms. We prove constant factor worst‐case guarantees for both algorithms, and present computational experiments showing that these algorithms perform within a few percent of optimality on operationally relevant instances. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 472–488, 2014     

基于SF-REM的齿轮箱剩余寿命预测方法研究

剩余寿命预测是视情维修决策的重点和难点.针对工程实践中历史数据少、模型参数估计精度低的问题,建立一种基于随机滤波(SF)的齿轮箱剩余寿命预测模型.该方法采用递归期望最大化(REM)算法对模型参数进行递归更新,推导极大似然估计方法的参数递归更新过程,最后经实例验证模型的有效性和实用性.     

一种装甲车辆CAN总线混合调度算法

针对当前装甲车辆综合电子系统节点消息传输不公平、紧急消息传输不及时等缺点,结合某型车辆消息紧急度和截止期,按照分层处理原则对总线协议进行了改进,提出了"分级决策动态均衡"的混合调度算法,并通过试验验证了算法的可行性和有效性。     

Model Versions and Fast Algorithms for Network Epidemiology

Network epidemiology has become a core framework for investigating the role of human contact patterns in the spreadingof infectious diseases. In network epidemiology, one represents the contact structure as a network of nodes（individuals） connected bylinks（sometimes as a temporal network where the links are not continuously active） and the disease as a compartmental model（whereindividuals are assigned states with respect to the disease and follow certain transition rules between the states）. In this paper, we discussfast algorithms for such simulations and also compare two commonly used versions,one where there is a constant recovery rate（the numberof individuals that stop being infectious per time is proportional to the number of such people）;the other where the duration of the diseaseis constant. The results show that, for most practical purposes, these versions are qualitatively the same.     

具有分布时滞的随机反应扩散细胞神经网络的几乎必然指数稳定性

研究一类具有分布时滞和反应扩散的随机细胞神经网络的稳定性。通过构造Lyapunov泛函,并利用It公式、半鞅收敛定理以及不等式技巧,得到了系统几乎必然指数稳定的充分条件。     

The quay crane scheduling problem with time windows

The quay crane scheduling problem consists of scheduling tasks for loading and unloading containers on cranes that are assigned to a vessel for its service. This article introduces a new approach for quay crane scheduling, where the availability of cranes at a vessel is restricted to certain time windows. The problem is of practical relevance, because container terminal operators frequently redeploy cranes among vessels to speed up the service of high‐priority vessels while serving low‐priority vessels casually. This article provides a mathematical formulation of the problem and a tree‐search‐based heuristic solution method. A computational investigation on a large set of test instances is used to evaluate the performance of the heuristic and to identify the impact of differently structured crane time windows on the achievable vessel handling time. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

A note on necessary and sufficient conditions for ordering properties of coherent systems with exchangeable components

We give necessary and sufficient conditions based on signatures to obtain distribution‐free stochastic ordering properties for coherent systems with exchangeable components. Specifically, we consider the stochastic, the hazard (failure) rate, the reversed hazard rate, and the likelihood ratio orders. We apply these results to obtain stochastic ordering properties for all the coherent systems with five or less exchangeable components. Our results extend some preceding results. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

多核系统中基于动态松弛时间回收的节能实时调度算法

许多嵌入式实时任务的实际执行时间往往小于最坏情况执行时间,因此可以产生大量的动态松弛时间.针对时限等于周期的偶发任务集,提出一种基于动态松弛时间回收的多核系统节能实时调度算法LRE-DVFS-ALL.该算法基于最优在线调度算法LRE-TL,利用TL面内节能实时调度思想,在每个TL面的提前完成时刻实现动态松弛时间回收,降...