An approximate method for solving stochastic two-stage programming problems

A procedure for solving stochastic two-stage programming problems has been developed. The approach consists of genetic algorithm optimization with point estimate procedures. It has several advantages over traditional methods, such as evaluating function values only, no continuous or gradient requirements and it can solve integer or continuous problems. To improve the performance of the method, a modification of a standard genetic algorithm is suggested and coded. Point estimation methods are used to efficiently evaluate the second stage expected value objective function. Finally, the overall procedure is applied to several linear and nonlinear problems.