Article ID: | iaor19962028 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 23 |
Issue: | 6 |
Start Page Number: | 515 |
End Page Number: | 526 |
Publication Date: | Jun 1996 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Coit David W. |
Keywords: | neural networks, heuristics |
This paper optimizes a well known NP-hard combinatorial problem-redundancy allocation-using a combined neural network and genetic algorithm (GA) approach. The GA searches for the minimum cost solution by selecting the appropriate components for a series-parallel system, given a minimum system reliability constraint. A neural network is used to estimate the system reliability value during search. This approach is an example of a computationally efficient method to apply GA optimization to problems for which repeated calculation of the objective function is impractical.