Ketki Kulkarni, a Ph.D. student at IEOR will be defending her Ph.D. thesis as per the following schedule. All are invited.
Title: Hybrid Simulation and Optimization Approaches to the Job Shop Scheduling Problem
Time: 11AM, Thursday, March 12, 2015
Venue: ME217
Abstract: Hybrid models that combine optimization methods with simulation models hold much promise to solve complex manufacturing problems. The primary objective of this thesis is to demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of simulation based hybrid architectures in solving these problems. In order to achieve this, two hybrid models are formulated and implemented and their performance is compared with the best known exact method for solving the job shop scheduling problem. The other objective of this research is to demonstrate that intelligent use of information from simulation model along with a suitable choice of decision variables can improve performance of existing frameworks. With this, it is proposed to show that Discrete Event Simulation models can play a larger role in Decision Support Systems, leading to improved integrated solution approaches.