An Ant Colony Optimization for Partner Selection in Virtual Enterprise

The partner selection in virtual enterprises organization is one of the key issues corporate enterprises experience nowadays. Based on the model of Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm (ACA) in virtual enterprise partner selection, in this paper, we fuse the genetic algorithm into ACA, called fusion algorithm, in order to improve the effect of the partner selection. The fusion algorithm has two steps: 1) it uses the GA to optimize the model of partner selection and takes advantages of rapid convergence of GA in initial search periods. 2) When GA search speed has become slow, the ACA takes over the search process, in which it uses the candidates produced by the GA as the seeds of pheromone used by ACA. By experimental comparison with GA optimization and ACA optimization, it shows that the fusion algorithm has performed better than the GA and ACA optimization, respectively, in both speed and accuracy under our selected numerical case. The fusion algorithm presented in this study may be applicable to similar business problems.

The partner selection problem (PSP) in virtual enterprise has been comprehensively investigated from the aspects of research fields, contents, attributes or criteria been considered, and algorithms. With the consideration of environmental protection, the importance of “green criteria” in PSP is introduced, and two new green criteria, i.e., carbon emission and lead content in manufacturing production, are firstly brought into PSP. A formulation of PSP with green criteria is established which includes four objectives and six constraints. A new improved algorithm, named Pareto genetic algorithm for PSP (Pareto-PSGA), is designed for addressing the specific PSP. With Pareto solution ideas, vector encoding, random selection, two-point crossover, and single-point mutation for Pareto solutions are designed in the Pareto-PSGA. Experimental results demonstrate that compared with other typical intelligent algorithms such as simulated annealing and particle swarm optimization, Pareto-PSGA shows high performance in solving the specific PSP with more suitable Pareto solutions in shorter time.

Virtual enterprise is the outcome of fierce competition in the world market. The selection of partners is one of the key factors for the success of virtual enterprises. Multi-agent system is an incompact agent federation composed of many agents, with its characteristics identical to virtual enterprises. It is, therefore, reasonable and effective to apply to the selection of enterprises' partner. The issue of trust is a hot topic in multi-agent system. The present trust model cannot well solve the problem of identifying the initial trust value of applicant agents. Moreover, there is room for improvement as to the calculation of agent trust value. This study puts forward a new trust management model based on multi-agent system. In the model, a fuzzy algorithm is used to calculate the initial value of the agent instead of a static definition. In addition, an independent validation module is used to test information reliability. Therefore, the problems of identifying initial trust value can be solved. Through system simulation, it is noted that based on the trust management model the cooperation rate has been enhanced and individual agent's income has risen by a big margin.

Selection of right partners is vital for virtual enterprise (VE) to take the advantage of market opportunity. Partner selection problem belongs to combinatorial optimisation category and known as NP-hard. A modified discrete particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm is proposed, in this work, to select alliances in a VE. The velocity terms, which is commonly used in the standard PSO algorithm, is avoided; rather, the concept of proportional likelihood with modifications, a method used in data mining techniques, is adopted to improve solution quality. A set of experiments have been conducted and results indicate PSO algorithm is an effective and efficient way to solve the partner selection problems with precedence, risk of failure and due date constraints. A design of experiment (DoE) approach is adopted to study statistical significance of various model parameters on solution quality.

This paper presents a novel intelligent and effective method based on an improved ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to solve the multi-objective ship weather routing optimization problem, considering the navigation safety, fuel consumption, and sailing time. Here the improvement of the ACO algorithm is mainly reflected in two aspects. First, to make the classical ACO algorithm more suitable for long-distance ship weather routing and plan a smoother route, the basic parameters of the algorithm are improved, and new control factors are introduced. Second, to improve the situation of too few Pareto non-dominated solutions generated by the algorithm for solving multi-objective problems, the related operations of crossover, recombination, and mutation in the genetic algorithm are introduced in the improved ACO algorithm. The final simulation results prove the effectiveness of the improved algorithm in solving multi-objective weather routing optimization problems. In addition, the black-box model method was used to study the ship fuel consumption during a voyage; the model was constructed based on an artificial neural network. The parameters of the neural network model were refined repeatedly through the historical navigation data of the test ship, and then the trained black-box model was used to predict the future fuel consumption of the test ship. Compared with other fuel consumption calculation methods, the black-box model method showed higher accuracy and applicability.

Within the scope of the collaborative research centre Non-hierarchical regional production at Chemnitz University of Technology, a virtual enterprise model is developed. This is based on very small performance units - the competence cells (CCs). The precondition of the efficient and thereby competitive operation of those networks is a network controlling for objectively selecting the best suitable CCs for every order. This problem gains complexity because the manufacture of a product can be carried through in different ways.

Recent advances in networking technology have increased the potential collaborations for virtual enterprises (VEs) on a global scale. Due to the dynamic nature of collaborations, building and evolving trust is essential to support the formation of VEs. There is a critical need for the new approach suited to this environment. This paper presents a trust-based approach for partner selection problem in the VEs. The proposed model explores the dynamic properties of trustworthy index, which provides a multiperspective and interactive overview of potential partners to the decision-makers. The model uses the hybrid learning algorithm of fuzzy cognitive map (FCM). As FCM has the excellent ability in modeling complex systems, the proposed model can support historical data mining automatically, and revise the existing model according to the new requirements. Results of three experiments show that this model provides reasonable performance and high adaptability for diverse partner selection problems.

Partner selection is one of the most critical issue in virtual enterprise, which has been extensively researched in recent years. It is difficult to be solved by the traditional optimization methods for partner selection is a combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, an improved quantum swarm evolutionary algorithm based on time-varying acceleration coefficients (IQSEA_TVAC) is proposed for partner selection optimization problem. The results of simulation experiments show that the improved algorithm is valid and outperforms the conventional quantum evolutionary algorithm.

Inverse transient radiation analysis in one-dimensional participating slab using improved Ant Colony Optimization algorithms

In order to improve the search result and low evolution speed, and avoid the tendency towards stagnation and falling into the local optimum of ant colony optimization(ACO) in solving the complex function, the traditional ant colony optimization algorithm is analyzed in detail, an improved ant colony optimization(IWSMACO) algorithm based on information weight factor and supervisory mechanism is proposed in this paper. In the proposed IWSMACO algorithm, the information weight factor is added to the path selection and pheromone adjustment mechanisms in order to dynamically adjust path selection probability and randomly select the behavior rules for further intelligentializing the ant colony. The supervisory mechanism added the dynamic convergence criterion of supervisory distance and used the optimal pheromone update strategy to self-adaptively select the excellent ants for updating the pheromone trails, and improve the solution qualities of each iteration, better guide the later ants for learning. Finally, the proposed IWSMACO algorithm is carried out by 12 TSP instances. The simulation experiment results show that the proposed IWSMACO algorithm can not only avoid falling into the local optimum, but also enhance the convergence speed. And it takes on remarkable optimized ability and higher search accuracy.

In order to improve the utilization of cloud computing resources, this paper studies cloud computing resource scheduling based on improved Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm (ACO) and Simulated annealing algorithm (SA). We apply ACO and SA to schedule the large-scale cloud computing resource data. This paper uses SA to prevent ACO falling into the local optimal solution, and accelerate the convergence speed of ACO. The experimental results show that the proposed method is more effective compared with the already existed approaches. Our proposed method can improve the resource utilization.

The cold chain logistics distribution industry not only demands all goods can be timely distribution but also requires to reduce the entire logistics transportation cost as far as possible, and distribution vehicle route optimization is the key problem of cold chain logistics transportation cost calculation. The traditional optimization method spends a lot of time to search so that it is tough to find the globally optimal path approach, which results in higher distribution costs and lower efficiency. To solve the abovementioned problems, a cold logistics distribution path optimization solution, ground on an improved ant colony optimization algorithm (IACO) is formulated. Specially, other constraints, e.g., the transport time factor, transport cooling factor, and mean road patency factor, can be added to the unified IACO. Meanwhile, the updating mode of traditional pheromone is improved to limit the maximum and minimum pheromone concentration on the road and change the path selection transfer probability. The simulation results and experiment make clear that the IACO algorithm is lower than the chaotic-simulated annealing ant colony algorithm (CSAACO) and the traditional ACO algorithm in terms of convergence speed, logistics transportation distance, and logistics delivery time. At the same time, we have successfully obtained the optimal logistics distribution path, which can provide valuable reference information for improving the economic benefits of cold chain logistics enterprises.

Wireless sensor networks with node calculation ability is weak, node power (battery provides) Limited, routing algorithm of wireless sensor networks should be the energy saving and simple algorithm. Ant colony algorithm shows good search results in the discrete solution space. This paper improves the ant colony optimization algorithm. The paper presents analysis of routing protocols for wireless sensor networks based on improved ant colony optimization algorithm, and the simulation results verify the effectiveness of the improved algorithm.

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm has a wide array of applications to solve combinatorial optimization problems, especially Traveling Salesman Problems (TSPs). The major limitations of ACO algorithm are premature convergence, the possibility that trapped in the local optima. In this paper, an improved Ant Colony Optimization algorithm is proposed which uses fractional order difference for pheromone updating and a weighted combined transition probability. The fractional order difference with the characteristic of long-term memory helps the algorithm make full use of the historical information, and the combined transition probability enhances the exploration ability of the algorithm by using the information of a few steps forward. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested on various data sets from the standard TSP Library compared with the corresponding integer order algorithm and some evolutionary algorithms. According to the empirical results, our algorithm based on fractional order difference overcomes the classic integer order. Furthermore, the results on a number of TSP instances demonstrate that compared with other evolutionary algorithms, the proposed method can obtain the better solutions on most instances with stronger robustness.

To address the issues of traditional Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) in mobile robot path planning, such as blind searching, slow convergence, and susceptibility to local optima, an improved ACO algorithm is proposed. The improvement mainly focuses on the most critical part of the ACO algorithm—state transition rules. A pseudo-random state transition rule is adopted for path selection, and a dynamic selection factor is defined to update the selection ratio. Additionally, an adaptive weight factor is introduced to adjust the selection probability. Furthermore, different initial pheromone concentrations are assigned based on heuristic information to avoid blind searching in the early stage. The pheromone evaporation factor is then adaptively adjusted to enhance global optimization capability while improving convergence speed. Comparative simulation experiments are conducted on different two-dimensional static grid maps. Experimental verification demonstrates that the enhanced ACO method attains accelerated convergence rates, significantly enhances search efficiency, and exhibits better global search capability, verifying the practicality and superiority of the proposed algorithm.