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IEGR 361 – INTRODUCTION TO LINEAR PROGRAMMING

Literature Critique (due 12/9/17) via Blackboard (Bb) by 11:59pm

NOTE: You MUST send your 1-page literature critique in both pdf and MS Word

(.docx or .doc) formats on-time to receive a grade and you MUST send a pdf version

of the article...Late assignments will NOT be accepted as the Bb link will disappear!

 Search for a refereed peer-reviewed journal article (i.e., not older than 8-10 years old from today) related to some area of Linear Programming/Operations Research

(e.g., new LP methods/discoveries to solve a specific problem, coding of LP

methods to solve a problem, etc.)

NOTE: Again, a “refereed” peer-reviewed article is one which has gone through a

review process of referees/judges and usually contains an abstract, introduction,

methodology, results, conclusions, etc. as well as show a few math equations,

figures, tables, etc. For the article you will seek for this assignment, the author(s)

should be showing/discussing how they used “linear programming” for solving

some form of industrial engineering-related problem. It can be for any area of IE

or other engineering field if necessary. If you are not certain, ask someone!

 Webpage articles (i.e., those from Google, Wikipedia, or other websites), encyclopedia & magazine articles, book chapters or book excerpts are NOT

acceptable. However, the use of Google Scholar and other sites which contain

refereed articles are acceptable. The 3 rd

page shows some acceptable journals.

 Each student must try to use different articles for this assignment. Any students who submit plagiarized literature critiques (from either past or current students)

will receive 0% for the assignment.

 SafeAssign (the Bb plagiarism checking tool) will be active for this assignment)

 See the following pages for instructions on how to format a literature critique

 Lastly, an actual full sample of how one should look when completed correctly is included as well.

cont’d on next page

Literature Critique Format Instructions:

The literature critique is a brief summary of an article from a ‘refereed’ journal. Critiques must be

word-processed, single spaced and at most one page. Also, you must have a minimum margin size of

0.75 inch and a maximum margin size of 1inch on all sides (i.e., where the top, left and rights sides are

basically even) of your submitted assignment. Occasionally, your article may not fully reach the bottom

margin due to the writing of your summary; thus, if this occurs, you must not leave more than a 1.5”

margin at the bottom in any case. If necessary, write a longer summary! Minimum acceptable font size

is 10 pt and the maximum is 12 pt. In the final paragraph, briefly discuss one point or idea from the

article that really made you think or really impressed you. Only the last paragraph can be written from

the first person point of view, but not in any other location of the literature critique should 1 st or 3

rd

person be used. See my posted critique for an example of this.

A proper bibliographic reference MUST appear at the top of the paper. Although many reference styles

exist, the only style that will be accepted in this class is the APA-style as shown below:

First Author’s Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial., & Second Author’s Last Name, First Initial.

Middle Initial. (year of publication). Title of the article with only the first letter of the first word in title

or sub-title as well as proper nouns and acronyms are capitalized. Name of Journal in Italics, volume in

italics (issue number in parenthesis and not in italics if known), first page number-last page number.

Examples:

Pitts, Jr., R.A., & Ventura, J.A. (2009). Scheduling manufacturing cells using Tabu Search.

International Journal of Production Research, 47(24), 6907-6928.

Jerald, J., Asokan, P., Prabaharan, G., & Saravanan, R. (2005). Scheduling optimization of flexible

manufacturing systems using particle swarm optimization algorithm. International Journal of Advanced

Manufacturing Technology, 25(1), 964-971.

Note: If more than 2 authors have written the article, ALL authors names must be listed in the

bibliographical reference as in the example above.

cont’d on next page

For additional help, see the APA Style website and click on the tutorial at

http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx or the Purdue OWL website at

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/06/ and click the “APA Formatting and Style Guide”

heading.

Acceptable Journals – Refereed (examples – this is not an exhaustive list)

International Journal of Production Research

IIE Transactions

Journal of Operations Management

Manufacturing &and Service Operations Management

Management Science

Omega

Research Policy

Production and Operations Management

Journal of Management Information Systems

Operations Research

European Journal of Operational Research

Computers and Operations Research

International Journal of Production Economics

Journal of Informetrics

Mathematics of Operations Research

INFORMS Journal on Computing

Journal of Engineering Education

etc…

Now, a sample of a ‘properly formatted’ literature critique is on the next page!

Literature Critique #1

Date Due: Month Day, Year

By: FirstName M.I. LastName (suffix if applicable)

Garetti, M., Pozzetti, A., & Tavecchio, R. (1996). Production scheduling in SMT electronic boards assembly.

Production Planning and Control, 7 (2), 197-204.

This article discusses the complex scheduling problem faced during surface mount technology (SMT)

electronic boards assembly. Developing a good production schedule can increase the performance of the

entire production system. Thus, this paper examines the results of research carried out for the

development of a production planning system for managing SMT assembly lines with variable printed

circuit board (PCB) mixes.

The model was set up based on a predetermined production load to meet the requirements of a weekly

production plan, using only automatic component-inserting machines. The production system is made up

of identical machines working in parallel with only one routing for each board. The assembly times varied

according to the board types and the set up time is calculated as “the time required by the operator to place

all component types on the feeders.” It is clear that this scheduling problem contains a sequencing problem

within it; and it has both deterministic and non-deterministic portions as well. The major focus of the

system aims at minimizing the makespan for the assigned production.

In order to achieve the minimization of the makespan, the setup and idle times of the bottleneck machine

has to be reduced. Reduction of setup time occurred by developing PCB mixes that could be produced

without any need for setup. This meant that a setup was only necessary when changing over from one ‘no

setup mix’ (NS mix) to another. After assuming that the bottleneck machine type (machine type with the

highest workload) for the NS mix was the same as the one for the whole examined period, the limitation of

idle time on this bottleneck machine type became the next task of importance.

There are 2 consecutive steps in the scheduling system: 1) generation of NS mixes and 2) sequencing of NS

mixes. The generation of the NS mixes can be achieved by either maximization of machine productivity or

minimization of machine setups. Sequencing of NS mixes can be achieved by minimizing the maximum

operating time for the machine or minimizing the setup time of the system.

In this research, the generation of the NS mixes was divided into three modules: generation of the feasible

mixes, determination of the optimum quantities for each feasible mix, and choice of the no setup mixes. At

the end of this phase, the mixes that share all electronic components on all the machine types and those

mixes that could be produced simultaneously (while fulfilling the constraint forced by the limited machine

component-storage capacity) were now grouped together. Next, the scheduling procedure forms a number

of sequences equal to the number of NS mixes to define a possible starting point. Then, the best sequence is

chosen.

What really impressed me about this article was how Garetti, Pozzetti, and Tavecchio used various

minimization techniques to actually achieve a reduced makespan for this complex PCB assembly problem.

After realizing the scheduling problem would be too time-consuming to do in the traditional manner, they

developed a heuristic procedure to achieve the main goal (by first achieving several sub-goals along the

way); and they were successful at it. Another thing that impressed me was how they clearly illustrated an

application example, which highlighted the behavior of the scheduling system at the end of the article.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Created on December 2, 2017 and last updated on December 2, 2017 by Dr. Richard Pitts, Jr.