Heuristic Optimization Networks in Production and Logistics (M. Affenzeller)

Abstract

Efficient utilization of resources is essential for companies in order to offer products and services in a competitive and sustainable manner. Therefore, optimization is a key-technology in manifold domains to solve complex practical problems. A severe limitation of current optimization techniques is the difficulty of sufficiently formalizing the entire problem situation and complexity. Many existing problem models are abstracted and isolated formulations of real world situations in order to make existing optimization techniques applicable. Consequently, the optimized solutions are often hard to transfer into the real world as the inherent complexity and volatility of the problem situations have been lost.
Novel, holistic optimization approaches show the potential to be transferred into practice for solving real-world optimization problems that are crucial for the industrial partners. This should lead to optimized production and logistics systems and higher efficiency in terms of time and resources, so that the international competitiveness of the involved high-wage production companies is significantly strengthened.
The presentation will include theoretical and practical showcases about the extension and integration of isolated problem models, simulation, and mathematical models into a new flexible system for real-world problem modeling and optimization. By combining these individual elements, a novel holistic optimization methodology has been developed to enable an integrated optimization of the overall system within a so-called optimization network.