In this paper, a computational methodology combining the simulated annealing algorithm with two machine learning techniques to select a near-optimal safeguard set for business risk response is presented. First, a mathematical model with four types of risk factor responses (avoid, mitigate, transfer, and accept) is constructed. Then, the simulated annealing algorithm is applied to find a set of near-optimal solutions to the model. Next, these solutions are processed by the k-means clustering algorithm for identifying three categories, and with a decision tree classifier, the most relevant elements of each one are obtained. Finally, the categorized solutions are shown to the decision-makers through a user interface. These stages are designed with the aim of the users can take an appropriate safeguard set and develop one specific and optimal program to respond to business risk factors. The results generated by the proposed approach are reached in a reasonable time using less computational resources than those used by other procedures. Furthermore, the best results obtained by the simulated annealing algorithm use a lower business budget, and they have a relative-error less than 0.0013% of the optimal solution given by a deterministic method.

Paper waste in the mockups design with regular, irregular, and amorphous patterns is a critical problem in digital printing presses. Paper waste reduction directly impacts production costs, generating business and environmental benefits. This problem can be mapped to the two-dimensional irregular bin-packing problem. In this paper, an iterated local search algorithm using a novel neighborhood structure to detect overlaps between amorphous shapes is introduced. This algorithm is used to solve the paper waste problem, modeled as one 2D irregular bin-packing problem. The experimental results show that this approach works efficiently and effectively to detect and correct the overlaps between regular, irregular, and amorphous figures.

In this paper, a hybrid genetic algorithm implemented in a grid environment to solve hard instances of the flexible flow shop scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times is introduced. The genetic algorithm takes advantage of the distributed computing power on the grid to apply a hybrid local search to each individual in the population and reach a near optimal solution in a reduced number of generations. Ant colony systems and simulated annealing are used to apply a combination of iterative and cooperative local searches, respectively. This algorithm is implemented using a master–slave scheme, where the master process distributes the population on the slave process and coordinates the communication on the computational grid elements. The experimental results point out that the proposed scheme obtains the upper bound in a broad set of test instances. Also, an efficiency analysis of the proposed algorithm indicates its competitive use of the computational resources of the grid.

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