The variable sampling inspection scheme with screening for the purpose of assuring the upper limit of maximum expected surplus loss after inspection has been proposed. In this inspection scheme, it has been assumed that a product lot consists of products manufactured through a single production line and lot quality characteristics follow a normal distribution. In the previous literature with respect to inspection schemes, it has been commonly assumed that lot quality characteristics obey a single normal distribution under the condition that all products are manufactured in the same condition. On the other hand, the production line is designed in order that the workload of respective processes becomes uniform from the viewpoint of line balancing. One of the solutions for the bottleneck process is to arrange the workshops in parallel. The lot quality characteristics from such a production line with the process consisting of some parallel workshops might not follow strictly the single normal distribution. Therefore, we expand an applicable scope of the above mentioned variable sampling inspection scheme with screening in this article. Concretely, we consider the variable sampling inspection with screening for the purpose of assuring the upper limit of average outgoing surplus quality loss in the production lots when the lot quality follows the mixed normal distribution.

Control charts are used to distinguish between chance and assignable causes in the variability of quality characteristics. When a control chart signals that an assignable cause is present, process engineers must initiate a search for the assignable cause of the process disturbance. Identifying the time of a process change could lead to simplifying the search for the assignable cause and less process down time, as well as help to reduce the probability of incorrectly identifying the assignable cause. The change point estimation by likelihood theory and the built-in change point estimation in a control chart have been discussed until now. In this article, we discuss two kinds of process change point estimation when the CUSUM ($\bar{x}$, s) control chart for monitoring process mean and variance simultaneously is operated. Throughout some numerical experiments about the performance of the change point estimation, the change point estimation techniques in the CUSUM ($\bar{x}$, s) control chart are considered.

In recent days, large-sized flat-panel display (FPD) has been increasingly applied to computer monitors and TVs. Mura defects, appearing as low contrast or non-uniform brightness region, sometimes occur in manufacturing of the Thin-Film Transistor Liquid-Crystal Displays (TFT-LCD). Implementation of automatic Mura inspection methods is necessary for TFT-LCD production. Various existing Mura detection methods based on regression diagnostics, surface fitting and data transformation have been presented with good performance. This paper proposes an efficient Mura detection method that is based on a regression diagnostics using studentized residuals for automatic Mura inspection of FPD. The input image is estimated by a linear model and then the studentized residuals are calculated for filtering Mura regions. After image dilation, the proposed threshold is determined for detecting the non-uniform brightness region in TFT-LCD by means of monitoring the every pixel in the image. The experimental results obtained from several test images are used to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method for Mura detection.

We focus on discrete event systems with a structure of parallel processing, synchronization, and no-concurrency. We use max-plus algebra, which is an effective approach for controller design for this type of system, for modeling and formulation. Since a typical feature of this type of system is that the initial schedule is frequently changed due to unpredictable disturbances, we use a simple model and numerical examples to examine the possibility of applying the concepts of the feeding buffer and the project buffer of critical chain project management (CCPM) on max-plus linear discrete event systems in order to control the occurrence of an undesirable state change. The application of a CCPM-based framework on a max-plus linear discrete event system was proven to be effective.

This paper deals with a closed-loop remanufacturing system with one manufacturer and one remanufacturer. The manufacturer sells new products bearing the 'Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).' It is assumed that the manufacturer's collection rate of used products depends only on the buy-back cost, while that of the remanufacturer depends on the minimum allowed quality level of used products in addition to the buy-back cost. Through the development of mathematical models with the objective function of maximizing profit, we study an efficient operation policy of each party. The decision variables are the unit selling price of new products and remanufactured products, the unit buy-back cost of the used products of the manufacturer and remanufacturer, and the minimum allowed quality level. The validity of the model is examined through numerical examples and sensitivity analysis.

Population learning algorithm (PLA) is a population-based method that was inspired by the similarities to the phenomenon of social education process in which a diminishing number of individuals enter an increasing number of learning stages. The study aims to develop a framework that repeatedly applying the PLA to solve the discrete resource constrained project scheduling problem with two objectives: minimizing project makespan and renewable resource availability, which are two most common concerns of management when a project is being executed. The PLA looping framework will provide a number of near Pareto optimal schedules for the management to make a choice. Different improvement schemes and learning procedures are applied at different stages of the process. The process gradually becomes more and more sophisticated and time consuming as there are less and less individuals to be taught. An experiment with ProGen generated instances was conducted, and the results demonstrated that the looping framework using PLA outperforms those using genetic local search, particle swarm optimization with local search, scatter search, as well as biased sampling multi-pass algorithm, in terms of several performance measures of proximity. However, the diversity using spread metric does not reveal any significant difference between these five looping algorithms.

This paper presents a framework for controlling mobile multiple robots connected by communication networks. This framework provides novel methods to control coordinated systems using mobile agents. The combination of the mobile agent and mobile multiple robots opens a new horizon of efficient use of mobile robot resources. Instead of physical movement of multiple robots, mobile software agents can migrate from one robot to another so that they can minimize energy consumption in aggregation. The imaginary application is making "carts," such as found in large airports, intelligent. Travelers pick up carts at designated points but leave them arbitrary places. It is a considerable task to re-collect them. It is, therefore, desirable that intelligent carts (intelligent robots) draw themselves together automatically. Simple implementation may be making each cart has a designated assembly point, and when they are free, automatically return to those points. It is easy to implement, but some carts have to travel very long way back to their own assembly point, even though it is located close to some other assembly points. It consumes too much unnecessary energy so that the carts have to have expensive batteries. In order to ameliorate the situation, we employ mobile software agents to locate robots scattered in a field, e.g. an airport, and make them autonomously determine their moving behaviors by using a clustering algorithm based on the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). ACO is the swarm intelligence-based methods, and a multi-agent system that exploit artificial stigmergy for the solution of combinatorial optimization problems. Preliminary experiments have provided a favorable result. In this paper, we focus on the implementation of the controlling mechanism of the multi-robots using the mobile agents.

This study provides a heuristic algorithm to solve the locating problem of repair service centers (RSCs). To enhance the customer service level with more satisfaction and quicker responsiveness, the locating problem of RSCs has become one of the important issues in reverse supply chain management. This problem is formulated as a zero-one mixed integer programming in which an exiting distributor will be considered to be an un-capacitated repair service center for the objective of cost-minimizing. Since logistical costs are highly interrelated with the multinational location of distributors and RSCs, the fixed cost for setting a repair service center, variable cost, transportation cost, and exchange rates are considered in this study. Recognizing the selection of un-capacitated RSCs' locations is a combinatorial optimization problem and is a zero-one mixed integer programming with NP-hard complexity, we provide a heuristic algorithm named as incremental cost matrix procedure (ICMP) to simplify the solving procedure. By using the concise and structural cost matrix, ICMP can efficiently screen the potential location with cost advantage and effectively decide which distributor should be a RSC. Results obtained from the numerical experiments conducted in small scale problem have shown the fact that ICMP is an effective and efficient heuristic algorithm for solving the RSCs locating problem. In the future, using the extended ICMP to solve problems with larger industrial scale or problems with congestion effects caused by the variation of customer demand and the restriction of the RSC capacity is worth a further investigation.