Objectives, conflicting

The architecture largely determines how well the system will meet its requirements. Much of our earlier focus in this book has been on describing the functional behavior that an end user would perceive however, the overall requirements and conflicting objectives are frequently much broader and vary among the different stakeholders—roles of people who will be involved in the construction of the system (see Table 12.2). 

The resulting library consisted of 250 compounds representing different compromises between the two conflicting objectives supplied. Figure 3.5 presents a plot of the Pareto-approximation proposed by the software library (circles connected by line). Each of the remaining circles represents a solution from the initial population set after the hard filtering process. The x-axis represents similarity to ER-a ligands and the -axis dissimilarity (1-similarity)... 

In this paper, the targeted source-stream temperatures are directly treated as individual design objective, and the multi-criteria optimization approach is adopted for HEN synthesis. The minimizing utility and the maximizing operational flexibility can be simultaneously considered as two conflict objectives for synthesis of the network structure. Furthermore, other targets such as minimizing number of matches can also be considered, such as,... 

Under incompatible objective circumstances, a DM must make a compromise decision that provides a maximal degree-of-satisfaction for all these conflict objectives. The new optimization problem, Eq. (14), can be interpreted as the synthetic notation of a conjunction statement (maximize jointly all objectives). The result of this aggregation can be viewed as a fuzzy intersection of all fuzzy goals, Js,s e S, and is still a fuzzy set, V. 

At first, only two conflict objectives are considered the minimal utility consumption and the maximal flexibility to all source-stream temperatures. And then the third objective, the minimal number of matches, would be appended. Results of two-phase fuzzy optimization with preference intervals of [2550, 12750] or [2550, 8850] for utility, [0, 150], [40, 90] or [40, 70] for flexibility, and [4, 7] for unit numbers, along with either or not considering restrictions on heat loads at extreme operating points, are listed in Table 4. The resulting HEN structures are also depicted in Fig. 2. Notably, the reduced range of flexibility, [40, 90], implies that the required minimum tolerance for temperature deviation is at least 40 K and a tolerance of maximum temperature deviation for 90 K... 

From these results, it is found that the proposed multi-criteria synthesis strategy can attain a definite and compromised solution for a problem with assorted conflict objectives. The preference intervals of various objectives have significant effects on final HEN structures. Such acceptable and/or preference intervals can also reflect the importance of different objective functions. Should one specific objective is emphasized, a tighter restriction or shrinking span should be placed on its acceptable ranges. 

Therefore, in spite of the large availability of methods for the recovery and purification of proteins, there is still a need for studies in this area, aiming to improve the existing techniques and to develop novel methods to satisfy new demands. The optimization of the recovery and purification process for a given bioproduct may involve conflicting objectives and, therefore, a careful balance should be made of the advantages and... 

The grading of timber should be viewed as part of a marketing strategy, designed to ensure that timber buyers obtain the quality of timber appropriate for their needs and timber sellers receive an optimal price for their product. Unfortunately, grading suffers from conflicting objectives and can be best described as an attempt to bring some order out of what would otherwise be a chaotic situation. 

The solution of problems having two or more (normally conflicting) objectives has become very common in the last few years in a wide variety of disciplines. Such problems are called multi-objective , and... 

In what follows, we describe and summarize research on multi-objective optimization in chemical engineering reported in Hakanen (2006) and Haka-nen et al. (2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2007). These studies have focused on offering chemical engineering an efficient and practical way of handling all the necessary aspects of the problem, that is, to be able to simultaneously consider several conflicting objective functions that affect the behaviour of the problem considered. Therefore, they have been solved using the interactive NIMBUS method. 

In recent years, the development and application of MOO techniques in chemical engineering have received wide attention in the hterature. In complex chemical processes, the ability to select optimum operating conditions in the presence of multiple conflicting objectives, given the various economical and environmental constraints, is of paramount importance for the profitability of chemical plants. For this reason, MOO has been applied to many chemical process optimization problems. Excellent reviews on the applications of MOO in chemical engineering have been presented by Bhaskar et al. (2000) and Masuduzzaman and Rangaiah (2008). 

In reality, many chemical processes are defined by complex equations where the application of SOO techniques does not provide satisfactory results in the presence of multiple conflicting objectives. Instead, the solution lies with the use of MOO techniques. MOO refers to the simultaneous optimization of multiple, often conflicting objectives, which produces a set of alternative solutions called the Pareto domain (Deb, 2001). These solutions are said to be Pareto-optimal in the sense that no one solution is better than any other in the domain when compared on all criteria simultaneously and in the absence of any preferences for one criterion over another. The decision-maker s experience and knowledge are then incorporated into the optimization procedure in order to classify the available alternatives in terms of his/her preferences (Doumpos and Zopounidis, 2002). MOO techniques... 

OTA reviewed recent trends in payment methods for prescription drugs in five countries Australia, Canada, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom. To a greater or lesser extent in each of these countries, drug payment policy is governed by two potentially conflicting objectives to minimize health insurance prescription drug costs and to help the country s domestic pharmaceutical industry. Payment policies represent a blend between these objectives. 

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