Article ID: | iaor20053293 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 134 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 137 |
End Page Number: | 151 |
Publication Date: | Feb 2005 |
Journal: | Annals of Operations Research |
Authors: | Rubinstein Reuven Y., Kroese D.P., Alon G., Raviv T. |
Keywords: | heuristics, simulation |
The buffer allocation problem (BAP) is a well-known difficult problem in the design of production lines. We present a stochastic algorithm for solving the BAP, based on the cross-entropy method, a new paradigm for stochastic optimization. The algorithm involves the following iterative steps: (a) the generation of buffer allocations according to a certain random mechanism, followed by (b) the modification of this mechanism on the basis of cross-entropy minimization. Through various numerical experiments we demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm and show that the method can quickly generate (near-)optimal buffer allocations for fairly large production lines.