Atidel B. Hadj-Alouane

Atidel B. Hadj-Alouane
University of Sharjah | US · Department of Industrial Engineering and Management

PhD

About

101
Publications
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1,772
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Introduction
Atidel B. Hadj-Alouane is currently a Professor in the Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management department, at the University of Sharjah, in the UAE. Until June 2021, she held the position of Professor of Industrial Engineering (IE) at the National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT), Tunisia. She is the founder of the Optimization and Analysis of Service and Industrial Systems (OASIS) research laboratory. Her research interests include Integrated logistics systems & green logistics, Risk management in supply chains, Scheduling, and OR application to Telecommunications, Cloud systems and infrastructure, and Health systems. Recently, she started a joint project on Smart scheduling within the the context of Industry 4.0.

Publications

Publications (101)
Article
Full-text available
First-Person Shooter (FPS) games are among the most popular latency-sensitive multiplayer online games. A separate game server manages each multiplayer group hosted appropriately to meet the given Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements of the game and the players. Cloud computing is typically used to host these game s...
Chapter
The flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is considered as an important problem in the modern manufacturing system. It is one of the most difficult problems in this area. In fact, this problem is a generalized and more complicated variant of the classical job-shop that introduces an additional decision level known as the assignment sub-proble...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Although the medical interventions provided by Outpatient Departments (OPDs) are scheduled, the process of patient arrival is often unpredictable. This can lead to a variety of issues such as overcrowding, long waiting times, and patient dissatisfaction. Therefore, predicting the patient arrival rate is necessary to allow healthcare managers to be...
Article
Improving the performance of healthcare organisations and implementing management tools successfully depends heavily on understanding human behaviour. As a core behavioural dimension, stress affects outcomes in a variety of related decision-making and performance contexts, including resource and capacity planning. In this regard, this study propose...
Article
Multidisciplinary outpatient clinics are healthcare structures that group together a set of units dealing with patients who require a series of cares and medical examinations. They are generally characterised by very complex processes due to a high number of activities and resources and a large exchange of different types of flows between multiple...
Conference Paper
Reliable tools to forecast demand for ambulatory care services are the cornerstone of any resource planning strategy. In fact, forecasting methods can influence planning and guide the resource allocation with the objective of increasing the system capacity, minimizing patient delays, and improving the overall healthcare quality. In this context, th...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction : Affectant la qualité de l’offre de soin, l’attente est souvent considérée comme principale source d’insatisfaction dans les organismes de santé publique en général et dans les hôpitaux de jour en particulier. Pour y remédier, une des alternatives consiste à accélérer le flux des patients en identifiant et réduisant les étranglements....
Article
Governments all over the world adopted different forms of progressive carbon taxation strategies (for example concave, convex and linear for respectively Swedish, French, and Canadian government). These progressive strategies provide companies with different degrees of flexibility to adapt their decisions to the new environmental regulations and re...
Article
This paper deals with a real manufacturing scheduling problem that is particularly encountered in the tannery industries. This problem often integrates employee timetabling and production scheduling. The employee timetabling problem is addressed in the context of skill requirements and under availability and legislative constraints. The production...
Conference Paper
Abstract:This research proposes a decision-making approach to help managers selecting the off-price retailers (discounters and clearance wholesalers) and to allocate the unsold inventory. The proposed approach is structured into three main steps. First, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method is used to assign a global importance weight based on th...
Conference Paper
Effective resource allocation is one of the driving factors in determining healthcare quality. In fact, an inefficient management of resources in healthcare organizations is usually paired with long waiting times, overcrowding and excessive delays. In this real-life study, we consider a multidisciplinary Outpatient Department (OPD) within a Tunisia...
Article
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This article presents a new approach to address the problem of joint planning of physical and financial flows. The main contribution of this work is that it integrates supply chain contracts and also focuses on supply chain tactical planning in an uncertain and disrupted environment, taking into account budgetary and contractual constraints. In ord...
Article
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The management of unsold inventory represents a significant issue for many manufacturing firms and retailers. Some clearance strategies have been proposed in previous researches to drain this undesirable inventory. This paper addresses the problem of the single-period ordering decisions and the selection of the appropriate clearance strategies unde...
Conference Paper
Dans les dernières décennies, la modélisation des comportements humains a suscité un intérêt croissant dans différents domaines. Les modèles comportementaux développés permettent à la fois de mieux comprendre le comportement existant et aussi de prédire ce qui se produirait dans diverses situations. Etant un facteur humain clé, le stress admet des...
Conference Paper
In this paper, we consider the two-machine no-wait flow-shop scheduling problem, when every machine is subject to one non-availability constraint and jobs have different release dates. The non-availability intervals of the machines overlap and they are known in advance. We aim to find a non-resumable schedule that minimizes the makespan. An improve...
Article
We study the deterministic single-item lot sizing problem with batch ordering under the buyback contract (LSP-BB) in a system with one retailer and one supplier. We consider a fixed cost per batch replenished in addition to the classical lot sizing costs, making the procurement cost structure stepwise. We also consider lost sales option with a lost...
Article
This review paper provides the operations management (OM) community with an exhaustive analysis of the mathematical models developed for the problem of low-carbon supply chain management (LCSCM). Our paper belongs to the green supply chain management (GSCM) reviews but is distinguished by its specific interest in analysing research works on supply...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This study aims to improve the performance of the outpatient department of Abderrahmène Mami Hospital, Tunis, by addressing overcrowding and decreasing patient waiting times. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is adopted to model the current ambulatory care process in order to support managers’ decision about new organizational practices. Several well...
Conference Paper
Unsold inventory represents a significant issue for many companies. Some clearance strategies have been proposed in previous researches to drain this undesirable inventory. The goal of this paper is to help companies in the choice of the most appropriate clearance strategies to improve the efficiency of the clearance chain. In this research, we dev...
Article
This paper addresses the single-item uncapacitated lot sizing problem with batch ordering under the buyback contract between a retailer and a supplier. The form of this type of contract consists in returning all the unused products at the end of every w periods (with w ≥ 1) to the supplier. This problem is studied with only full batches (OFB), whic...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Abstract —A critical problem in many manufacturing, distribution, and retailing companies is the selection of the best solution to liquidate the unsold inventory using alternate distribution channels. In this paper, preliminary research concepts and findings concerning the disposal of the unsold inventory are presented. Different attributes and str...
Article
This paper deals with the deterministic single-item procurement planning problem with batch ordering under the buyback contract. We assume a buyback contract with returns of unused products at the end of each period to the supplier and we consider a piecewise procurement cost structure composed by a fixed ordering cost, a variable procurement cost...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper we study the single-item lot sizing problem under a capacity reservation contract. A manufacturer is replenished by an external supplier with batch deliveries and a certain capacity is reserved at the supplier level with an advantageous cost. In addition to the classical ordering and inventory holding costs, for each batch ordered und...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A two-machine no-wait flow-shop scheduling problem to minimize the makespan is considered in this paper. Every machine is subject to one non-availability constraint. The non-availability intervals of the machines overlap and they are known in advance. The jobs have different release dates. Genetic algorithms are developed to solve the problem. Co...
Article
We consider the single machine scheduling problem with release dates and tails, provided that the machine is unavailable during a fixed interval. This problem is strongly NP-hard. We use the Jackson's preemptive algorithm with precedence constraints to compute a lower bound and the Schrage's sequence as an upper bound. Then, we propose an improved...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We consider the single machine scheduling problem with release dates and tails, provided that the machine is unavailable during a fixed interval.This problem is strongly NP-hard. We use the Jackson's preemptive algorithm with precedence constraints to compute a lower bound and the Schrage's sequence as an upper bound. Then, we propose an improved l...
Conference Paper
This paper studies two important problems, often encountered in the manufacturing industry and particularly in the tanneries: human resources planning and production scheduling. In this work, we focus on the problem that integrates Employee Timetabling [ETP] by considering their skills under various constraints, with a Hybrid Job-Shop Scheduling [H...
Article
In this work, we show that the optimization models for manufacturing systems should evolve to consider the environmental impacts of manufacturing activities and to integrate the environmental performance of finished products. In particular, the selection of manufacturing processes (technologies) and input items (components) should be revised with e...
Conference Paper
In this paper, we address the problem of minimizing the use of voice processing resources of NGN equipments, the so called trunk gateways (TG), that transform the TDM traffic of legacy network into IP packets. We develop an Integer Linear Program (ILP) and add valid inequalities in order to strengthen its linear relaxation, tighten the lower bound...
Article
We consider the single machine scheduling problem with release dates and tails, provided that the machine is unavailable during a fixed interval. We aim to minimize the maximum delivery time under the nonresumable senario. This problem is strongly NP-hard. The proposed algorithm is based on a branch-and-bound method. We use Jackson’s preemptive alg...
Article
Full-text available
The inventory routing problem (IRP) deals with the integration of inventory decisions into the classical vehicle routing problem. In such a situation, the customer's inventory is controlled by the supplier/distributor who de-cides on not only the vehicle routes but also on the quantities to be delivered to each customer. The objective is to mini-mi...
Article
In this work, we show that supply chain design models should evolve to consider the impacts of supply chain design decisions on the environmental performance of output products. We then develop a supply chain design model where a single output product is sold by the firm and the demand of this product is not an input parameter but depends on its gr...
Article
Dealing disruptions has increasingly attracted researchers’ attention in the last decades due to recent events: weather deregulation, natural disasters, financial crisis, etc. Researchers often dealt with the strategic aspect of the problem while making facility location decisions to build a robust supply chain. In this paper we address the flexibi...
Conference Paper
In the present paper, we consider the Network Migration Scheduling Problem which consists of finding an order of migration of the nodes from an outdated network to a new one. It has been shown that this problem is very difficult to solve exactly even for small instances. We give a simple heuristic based on sorting the demands according to the decre...
Article
Full-text available
Reverse logistics is receiving increased attention due to growing environmental awareness and concerns. From an economical point of view, studies have shown that reverse logistics practices can result in substantial cost savings for companies. Product returns are the most common aspect of reverse logistics. Yet, most companies tend to neglect retur...
Conference Paper
In this paper, we consider the Network Migration Scheduling Problem (NMSP) that aims to migrate nodes from an outdated telecommunication network to a new one. Nodes are migrated, one at each time period, from the old to the new network. To the best of our knowledge, there is one exact formulation for this problem that is intrac-table for large netw...
Conference Paper
In this paper we study a capacity planning and demand allocation problem where we aim to assign the demand for a set of products to a set of potential facilities that are subject to disruptions. Our objective is to find the optimal solution that minimizes the total cost while maximizing the demand satisfaction. We consider the process flexibility a...
Article
In this paper, we develop a mixed integer programming model for a supplier selection problem in an international context. The main features that characterize the international supplier selection are first identified. We show that when operating in an international context, the supplier selection process should consider the following issues: several...
Article
The Flexible Job-Shop Scheduling Problem (FJSP) is one of the most complicated scheduling problems [5]. Thereby exact methods are not effective for solving FJSP also for small instances and meta-heuristic approaches must thus be used to find near optimal solutions with reasonable computation time. In our previous works [3], we have proposed a new a...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, we consider the two-machine no-wait flow-shop scheduling problem, when every machine is subject to one non-availability constraint and jobs have different release dates. The non-availability intervals of the machines overlap and they are known in advance. We aim to find a non-resumable schedule that minimises the makespan. We propose...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper we consider a capacity sizing and routing problem in synchronous digital hierarchy/wavelength division multiplexing networks with nodes having switching capabilities. This problem is well known in the literature as the multi-hop traffic grooming problem and is generally formulated as an integer linear program, which is especially hard...
Conference Paper
In this paper we present a mathematical model that illustrates the impact of supply chain activities on the environmental quality of manufactured products while maximizing the profits of the company under a set of constraints such as those related to the environmental legislation. We present the application of the model to a textile example and we...
Conference Paper
Home health care is a growing medical service. It includes medical, paramedical and social services delivered to patients at their own homes. The main benefits of home health care are the significant decrease in the hospitalization and the cost reduction in the entire health system. However, this service is not an easy task because it combines the...
Conference Paper
In this paper we present a mathematical model that illustrates the impact of supply chain activities on the environmental quality of manufactured products while maximizing the profits of the company under a set of constraints such as those related to the environmental legislation. The environmental quality of a product is determined by some intrins...
Conference Paper
We study the problem of designing and demand routing, at minimum cost, in Intelligent Networks (IN). The problem consists of, simultaneously, locating Service Switching Points (SSP), assigning calls to SSP, determining transmission capacities on the links and routing the calls through the network. The present work is an extension to our previous pa...
Article
In this paper, we consider the problem of integrated capacity dimensioning and demand routing in SDH/WDM networks, well-known in the telecommunication community as the traffic grooming problem. This problem is generally formulated as an integer linear programme that is typically hard to solve due to the unsplittable nature of channels and their non...
Article
In this paper, we focus on the supplier selection in a global context. The main features that characterise the global supplier selection are first identified. They mainly include the necessity of integrating inventory and transportation issues and considering several buyers’ sites. We then show that supplier selection models that simultaneously con...
Article
This paper presents a two-phase optimization approach for the design of global supply chains. The first phase is concerned with the strategic planning level while the second phase deals with the tactical level. We consider several international factors such as transfer prices of tangible and intangible activities. To model the transfer price, we ad...
Article
In this paper we study the process flexibility as a strategy to mitigate disruptions impacts. We consider a location-allocation problem where we aim to assign the demand for a set of products to a set of potential facilities characterized by their fixed operating costs. In addition to the cost of assigning product demand to facilities, we consider...
Conference Paper
In this paper we study the process flexibility as a strategy to mitigate disruptions impacts. We consider a location-allocation problem where we aim to assign the demand for a set of products to a set of potential facilities characterized by their fixed operating costs. In addition to the cost of assigning product demand to facilities, we consider...
Conference Paper
With globalization, production sites have become geographically dispersed. Consequently, the lead times of purchasing, manufacturing, and transportation throughout the SC are becoming increasingly long which impacts the customer service in term of delivery lead time. Generally, multinational companies choose to build up stocks at different levels o...
Conference Paper
We consider a system with a set of products and a set of potential facilities. Each product is characterized by its demand. Each facility is characterized by a fixed operating cost. Beside the assignment cost of the product demand to a facility, we consider a configuration cost that is incurred to enable the facility to handle the product. The unce...
Conference Paper
In this paper, we first identify the main features that characterize the supplier selection in an international environment. Then, based on an extensive review of the supplier selection literature, we assess how well existing models (mainly, analytical models) are suited for the international purchasing context. We then propose a modeling framework...
Conference Paper
Based on an extensive review of the green supply chain literature and its different related concepts, this paper first proposes a definition of the green supply chain. Then, we develop the basis of an optimization model for the design of green supply chains while identifying the different components that should be considered (activities, decisions,...
Article
Full-text available
In our previous works, we have proposed a new approach based on genetic algorithms and the learning by injection of sequences for solving the Flexible Job-shop Scheduling Problem (FJSP). This approach was based on a joint resolution of the inherent assignment subproblem and the sequencing subproblem with total flexibility. In this paper, we develop...
Article
In this paper, we propose a mathematical model for the design of supply chains in the delocalization context. Our main objective is to develop a strategic-tactical supply chain design model that integrates all the relevant components that characterize the delocalization problem. We adopt the activity based approach to model the problem and we focus...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The two-machine no-wait flowshop problem with availability constraints and release dates is studied in this paper. We work under the assumption that each machine is unavailable during a time interval. The intervals overlap and are known in advance. Two heuristics based on Gilmore-Gomory and Cheng and Liu algorithms are proposed for this problem. An...
Article
In this paper, we consider the problem of simultaneous capacity dimensioning and demand routing in SDH/WDM networks, well-known in the telecommunication community as Traffic Grooming Problem. This problem is generally formulated as an Integer Linear Program that has been shown to be NP-complete and especially hard to solve due to the unsplittable n...
Article
The inventory routing problem (IRP) deals with the coordination of inventory replenishment and transportation. The IRP refers to the situation where the inventory replenishment at a number of locations is controlled by a central manager with a fleet of vehicles. A distribution strategy is necessary for achieving the minimization of distribution cos...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The hospital priority is to provide the patient with high quality care and therefore to protect it from all types of infection that may harm his health. Nevertheless, the hospitals must adapt themselves to the new economical context and control their costs of medicating while minimizing the impact of their decisions on the environment. In this work...
Article
A real case of procurement planning of wood fibre for a network of pulp mills is modelled and validated. Several sourcing options are available to the pulp mill (in-house sawmills, external sawmills, trading sawmills, partners). The model optimizes the choice of suppliers, determines the supply option (contract or spot market) and decides for each...
Article
This paper proposes a mathematical model for the design of supply chains in the delocalization context while adopting the activity based approach. The characteristics of the delocalization problem are …rst identi…ed. They are then considered in the modeling appraoch. A case study is …nally presented in order to illustrate the feasibility of the pro...
Article
This paper presents the important factors that should be considered in the design of supply chains in the delocalization context. The methodology adopted in this work consists firstly in determining the characteristics of the delocalization problem by proposing an appropriate definition of the phenomena, reviewing its theoretical background, and di...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Recovery of used products is receiving increased attention due to growing environmental concerns. From an economical point of view, studies have shown that reverse logistics practices can result in substantial cost savings for companies. This research is focused on product recovery, and in particular on recovery operations of in-use products. Our g...
Article
The purpose of this work is to test the efficiency of metaheuristics to solve the optimization problem of the design of Mediterranean buildings. We are interested in the minimisation of the energy load as well as the monetary cost. It is an interesting decision support problem because both energy and monetary costs depend on several parameters and...
Article
This paper presents the important factors that should be considered in the design of supply chains in the delocalization context. The methodology adopted in this work consists firstly in determining the characteristics of the delocalization problem by proposing an appropriate definition of the phenomena, reviewing its theoretical background, and di...
Article
Full-text available
Le bloc opératoire est un lieu hautement stratégique pour les établissements hospitaliers car il est un coeur des compétences médicales et emploie une part importante du budget de l'établissement pour son exploitation. Ce papier présente une étude sur la programmation opératoire que l'on pratique dans les établissements privés. Une approche pour la...
Article
While it is possible to check the energy performance of a given building by means of several available methods, the inverse problem of determining the optimum configuration given a desired performance is more difficult to solve. In the Mediterranean region this problem is more complex due to the following two reasons: the air-conditioning load is a...
Article
A scenario-based approach to solving a multiproduct and stochastic capacity-planning problem, is presented. This approach is a flexible management tool for strategic decision-makers to optimise, over a given planning horizon, and under uncertain demand, capacity-planning strategies. It is applicable in situations where different products can be pro...
Article
An optimal control problem for hybrid systems is formulated based on hybrid machine models. A practical approach to solving the problem, suitable for a class of hybrid systems, is presented. This approach consists of transforming the hybrid machine model into a dynamic programming model. Transition costs, in this latter model, are computed using mi...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper presents an approach for solving a job shop problem with sequencedependent setup times where the objective is to minimize maximum lateness and makespan. This approach consists of using the “Shifting Bottleneck Procedure”, designed for the job shop problem with the makespan objective, while introducing two major modifications: (1) the us...
Article
Many healthcare institutions have been researching tools to reduce costs and to ensure efficient use of hospital facilities. Operating rooms are considered among the most costly hospital facilities. In the present work, a two-step approach for operating rooms scheduling is introduced. The first step consists of assigning surgical operations to oper...
Article
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/3517/5/bap7658.0001.001.pdf http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/3517/4/bap7658.0001.001.txt
Article
The operating theatre is the resource neck of the hospitals. It would be interesting to optimize its functions. The principal activity of the block is the surgical act related to the art of medicine, which we cannot optimize. However, we can improve the performances of the operating theatre by developing the logistics activities. We are particularl...
Article
Many health-care institutions are searching for tools to reduce costs and ensure efficient use of resources while providing good quality of care. Operating theatre constitutes one of the expensive sector of the hospital. In this work, we present a two-step method to address operating theatre scheduling. The first step consists of assigning interven...
Article
The purpose of the simulation evaluation is to assess the expected future impacts of the DIRECT technologies under scenarios of full deployment. This provided some indication of the level of benefits that can be expected from DIRECT in the future. Because deployment of some of the DIRECT communications systems required purchase of special receivers...
Article
We consider the problem of designing a distributed computing system for handling a set of repetitive tasks on a periodic basis. Tasks assigned to different processors need communication link capacity, tasks executing on the same processor do not. The aim is to develop a design of minimum total cost that can handle all the tasks. We compare the perf...
Article
Full-text available
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/3518/5/baq0881.0001.001.pdf http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/3518/4/baq0881.0001.001.txt
Article
Full-text available
crossover operation would cleave each permutation at some point, say after the second job in the sequence, and exchange leading segments. Executing that process on the example schedules gives 5 - 3 - 3 - 4 - 5 and 1 - 2 - 4 - 2 - 1 (see Figure 1). Neither is a valid sequence. Genetic algorithms have been slow to gain acceptance for operations resea...
Article
We present a genetic algorithm for the multiple-choice integer program that finds an optimal solution with probability one (though it is typically used as a heuristic). General constraints are relaxed by a nonlinear penalty function for which the corresponding dual problem has weak and strong duality. The relaxed problem is attacked by a genetic al...
Article
An approach for nonlinear integer programs based on a dual genetic algorithm is developed. It has a wide range of applications which includes planning, operational and design problems. This approach consists of relaxing some selected constraints of the integer program in question, using a nonlinear penalty function. Weak and strong duality results...
Article
Full-text available
We present a genetic algorithm for the multiple-choice integer program that finds an optimal solution with probability one (though it is typically used as a heuristic). General constraints are relaxed by a nonlinear penalty function for which the corresponding dual problem has weak and strong duality. The relaxed problem is attacked by a genetic al...
Article
A constrained assignment problem that arises in assigning medical students to internships is considered. A similar problem arises in many other applications. It is a 0-1 integer programming problem. We show that the LP relaxation for this problem has a generalized network flow model