Network modeling and optimization for engineering applications: A Service-oriented EC Architecture

In the past decades, we have devoted our efforts to the research of evolutionary algorithms and its application to optimization problems in the fields of Industrial Engineering (IE) and Operations Research (OR). We summarized our research results in our book entitled Network Models and Optimization: Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm Approach by Springer, 2008. We defined an evolutionary computation architecture and developed a software tool for the evolutionary computation researches and real-world applications, called Service-oriented Evolutionary Computation Architecture (SoECA). In this presentation, we first briefly explain the network modeling and evolutionary optimization for engineering applications. Next we give an introduction of SoECA, and present how to use this software tool for the EC researches and real-world applications. Then we show a network modeling technique to formulate the complex problems, and explain the design of evolutionary algorithms in engineering applications: logistics network models, communication network models, advanced planning and scheduling models, and advanced network models. Finally we discuss future research issues in the design of SoECA for engineering applications.