This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Artificial Evolution, EA 2005, held in Lille, France, in October 2005. The 26 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 78 submissions. The papers cover all aspects of artificial evolution: genetic programming, machine learning, combinatorial optimization, co-evolution, self-assembling, artificial life and bioinformatics.

This book provides a complete background for designing and implementing hybrid metaheuristics to solve complex optimization problems - continuous/discrete, mono-objective/multi-objective, optimization under uncertainty - in a wide range of application domains.

The main goal of this book is to provide a state of the art of hybrid metaheuristics. The book provides a complete background that enables readers to design and implement hybrid metaheuristics to solve complex optimization problems (continuous/discrete, mono-objective/multi-objective, optimization under uncertainty) in a diverse range of application domains. Readers learn to solve large scale problems quickly and efficiently combining metaheuristics with complementary metaheuristics, mathematical programming, constraint programming and machine learning. Numerous real-world examples of...

This book discusses the main techniques and newest trends to manage and optimize the production and service systems. The book begins by examining the three main levels of decision systems in production: the long term (strategic), the middle term (tactical) and short term (operational). It also considers online management as a new level (a sub level of the short term). As each level encounters specific problems, appropriate approaches to deal with these are introduced and explained. These problems include the line design, the line balancing optimization, the physical layout of the production...