This book provides an introduction to the models, methods, and results of some due date-related scheduling problems in the field of multiagent scheduling. In multiagent scheduling, two or more agents share a common processing resource and each agent wants to optimize its own objective function with respect to its own set of jobs. Since the agents have conflicting objective functions, they have to negotiate among themselves with regard to sharing the common resource to optimize their own objective functions. A key feature of due date-related scheduling concerns the way in which due dates are considered: they can be given parameters or decision variables. For the former case, the motivation stems from the need to improve inventory and production management. For the latter case, due date assignment becomes a challenging issue since the decision-maker has to balance inventory holding costs against the benefits of fulfifilling orders in time. As for due dates, this book addresses the following three different scenarios: (i) The due dates of the jobs from either one or both of the two agents are decision variables, which are determined using some due date assignment models; (ii) The due dates of jobs in each job set are considered as given parameters, whereas which due date corresponds to a given job needs to determine; and (iii) The due date of each job is exogenously given. When the last case is involved, the objective function of each agent is related to the number of just-in-time jobs that are completed exactly on their due dates. For each considered scenario, depending on the model settings, and on the objective function of each agent, this book addresses the complexity, and the design of efficient exact or approximated algorithms. This book aims at introducing the author's research achievements in due date-related scheduling with two agents. It is written for researchers and Ph.D. students working in scheduling theory and other members of scientific community who are interested in recent scheduling models. Our goal is to enable the reader to know about some new achievements on this topic.

Scheduling theory has received a growing interest since its origins in the second half of the 20th century. Developed initially for the study of scheduling problems with a single objective, the theory has been recently extended to problems involving multiple criteria. However, this extension has still left a gap between the classical multi-criteria approaches and some real-life problems in which not all jobs contribute to the evaluation of each criterion. In this book, we close this gap by presenting and developing multi-agent scheduling models in which subsets of jobs sharing the same resources are evaluated by different criteria. Several scenarios are introduced, depending on the definition and the intersection structure of the job subsets. Complexity results, approximation schemes, heuristics and exact algorithms are discussed for single-machine and parallel-machine scheduling environments. Definitions and algorithms are illustrated with the help of examples and figures.

The book covers different aspects of real-world applications of optimization algorithms. It provides insights from the Fourth International Conference on Harmony Search, Soft Computing and Applications held at BML Munjal University, Gurgaon, India on February 7–9, 2018. It consists of research articles on novel and newly proposed optimization algorithms; the theoretical study of nature-inspired optimization algorithms; numerically established results of nature-inspired optimization algorithms; and real-world applications of optimization algorithms and synthetic benchmarking of optimization algorithms.

This book collects the most significant literature on agents in an attempt top forge a broad foundation for the field. Includes papers from the perspectives of AI, databases, distributed computing, and programming languages. The book will be of interest to programmers and developers, especially in Internet areas.

"This book is a compilation of advanced research results in architecture and modeling issues of multi-agent systems. It serves as a reference for research on system models, architectural design languages, methods and reasoning, module interface design, and design issues"--Provided by publisher.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization, ISCO 2012, held in Athens, Greece, in April 2012. The 37 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 94 regular and 30 short submissions. They present original research on all aspects of combinatorial optimization, ranging from mathematical foundations and theory of algorithms to computational studies and practical applications.

The purpose of the 3rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS) was to bring together researchers, engineers, and practitioners interested in the advances and business applications of information systems. The research papers published here have been carefully selected from those presented at the conference, and focus on real world applications covering four main themes: database and information systems integration; artificial intelligence and decision support systems; information systems analysis and specification; and internet computing and electronic commerce. Audience: This book will be of interest to information technology professionals, especially those working on systems integration, databases, decision support systems, or electronic commerce. It will also be of use to middle managers who need to work with information systems and require knowledge of current trends in development methods and applications.

PAAMS, the International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems is an international yearly stage to present, to discuss, and to disseminate the latest advances and the most important outcomes related to real-world applications. It provides a unique opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary experts, academics and practitioners together to exchange their experience in the development of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. This volume presents the papers that have been accepted for the 2010 edition. These articles capture the most innovative results and this year’s advances. Each paper has been reviewed by three different reviewers, from an international com-mittee composed of 82 members from 26 different countries. From the 66 submissions received, 19 were selected for full presentation at the conference, and 14 were accepted as short papers. Moreover, PAAMS'10 incorporated special ses-sions and workshops to complement the regular program, which included 85 ac-cepted papers.

"This 4-volume set provides a compendium of comprehensive advanced research articles written by an international collaboration of experts involved with the strategic use of information systems"--Provided by publisher.