NCKU Research Team Won Honorable Mentions in 2010 INFORMS RAS Problem Solving Competition
Tainan, Taiwan, November 24th, 2010
A research team led by Associate Prof. I-Lin Wang of Department of Industrial and Information Management at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, has won Honorable Mentions in the 2010 Problem Solving Competition held by Railway Application Section (RAS), Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), United States.
The NCKU research team includes Associate Prof. I-Lin Wang and master students Min-Ting Liao, who graduated from the Department of Asia-Pacific Industrial and Business Management at National Kaohsiung University, and Zi-Qin Lin, who graduated from the Department of Information Management at National Chung Hsing University, from Department of Industrial and Information Management.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), established in 1995, is the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the fields of operations research (OR), management science (MS), and business analytics, and the Railway Applications Section (RAS) is one of the INFORMS sub-groups that facilitates productivity improvements and growth in the rail industry through appropriate application of ORMS techniques.
RAS held its first Problem-Solving Competition this year, and the purpose of this competition is to draw the public attention by offering high-value awards, USD$5,000 in total, so that more new hands can participate in railway related research.
There were 89 teams registering for the competition and 31 of them, mostly composed by faculties or doctoral students from several renowned universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S., Stanford University, U.S., University of Michigan, U.S., University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S., Carnegie Mellon University, U.S., Tel Aviv University, Israel, and Tsinghua University, China, have submitted their final reports.
The competition problem, a hard network design problem, seeks an optimal locomotive refueling planning in which the best number and locations of fuel tanks, as well as when and which yard to conduct refueling for each locomotive during the 14-day planning horizon, have to be calculated so that the total costs are minimized.
Prof. Wang and his team members spent about one and a half month to come out with 3 novel solution methods toward this problem by first observing and proving the hidden symmetric property of the problem, which then can be used to reduce about half of the variables and boost up the efficiency of solution methods, and showing a reduced form of the problem with fixed number of locations of fuel tanks corresponds to a min-cost flow problem.
Such a min-cost flow problem can be solved by a special linear-time greedy algorithm; by plugging the method into a simulated annealing framework, they can calculate a solution of good quality very quickly.
Finally, the team proposed a 2-stage heuristic that exploits the idea of “natural frequency”, where they calculated an integer program by identifying the natural frequency for each train in the first stage, and then tried to calculate the optimal refueling plan in stage 2 based on the solution in stage 1.
Due to the limited research experience of the team members, the NCKU research team suffered in the implementation for quite a while, but fortunately enough, they managed to resolve most difficulties encountered and submitted a 5-page report by the last minute of the deadline.
Because most teams were quite strong, the judge committee had a hard time to decide which team did better than others. After intensively debating for a month and a half, the judge team selected 5 teams in the final list.
Lattice Semiconductor Corp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University are the top 3 teams, while National Cheng Kung University and another cross-school team of Carnegie Mellon University and University of Miami are the recipients of Honorable Mentions.
NCKU research team is the only team from East Asia and the only Chinese team that received the award.
Since 2003 fall, Associate Prof. I-Lin Wang has supervised students in winning 13 awards in master thesis or paper competitions and 4 awards in undergraduate student projects or paper competitions hosted by the OR Society of Taiwan (ORSTW), Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineering (CIIE) or DHL.
Associate Prof. Wang has also received the best poster award in the OR subdivision of the NSC Industrial Engineering division in 2009, and he is also a member of the Railway Research Center of NCKU.
By receiving Honorable Mentions in this competitive international competition, Prof. I-Lin Wang has proved that National Cheng Kung University and researchers in Taiwan do have the capability and potential to conduct in-depth research.
A research team led by Associate Prof. I-Lin Wang of Department of Industrial and Information Management at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, has won Honorable Mentions in the 2010 Problem Solving Competition held by Railway Application Section (RAS), Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), United States.
The NCKU research team includes Associate Prof. I-Lin Wang and master students Min-Ting Liao, who graduated from the Department of Asia-Pacific Industrial and Business Management at National Kaohsiung University, and Zi-Qin Lin, who graduated from the Department of Information Management at National Chung Hsing University, from Department of Industrial and Information Management.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), established in 1995, is the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the fields of operations research (OR), management science (MS), and business analytics, and the Railway Applications Section (RAS) is one of the INFORMS sub-groups that facilitates productivity improvements and growth in the rail industry through appropriate application of ORMS techniques.
RAS held its first Problem-Solving Competition this year, and the purpose of this competition is to draw the public attention by offering high-value awards, USD$5,000 in total, so that more new hands can participate in railway related research.
There were 89 teams registering for the competition and 31 of them, mostly composed by faculties or doctoral students from several renowned universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S., Stanford University, U.S., University of Michigan, U.S., University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S., Carnegie Mellon University, U.S., Tel Aviv University, Israel, and Tsinghua University, China, have submitted their final reports.
The competition problem, a hard network design problem, seeks an optimal locomotive refueling planning in which the best number and locations of fuel tanks, as well as when and which yard to conduct refueling for each locomotive during the 14-day planning horizon, have to be calculated so that the total costs are minimized.
Prof. Wang and his team members spent about one and a half month to come out with 3 novel solution methods toward this problem by first observing and proving the hidden symmetric property of the problem, which then can be used to reduce about half of the variables and boost up the efficiency of solution methods, and showing a reduced form of the problem with fixed number of locations of fuel tanks corresponds to a min-cost flow problem.
Such a min-cost flow problem can be solved by a special linear-time greedy algorithm; by plugging the method into a simulated annealing framework, they can calculate a solution of good quality very quickly.
Finally, the team proposed a 2-stage heuristic that exploits the idea of “natural frequency”, where they calculated an integer program by identifying the natural frequency for each train in the first stage, and then tried to calculate the optimal refueling plan in stage 2 based on the solution in stage 1.
Due to the limited research experience of the team members, the NCKU research team suffered in the implementation for quite a while, but fortunately enough, they managed to resolve most difficulties encountered and submitted a 5-page report by the last minute of the deadline.
Because most teams were quite strong, the judge committee had a hard time to decide which team did better than others. After intensively debating for a month and a half, the judge team selected 5 teams in the final list.
Lattice Semiconductor Corp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University are the top 3 teams, while National Cheng Kung University and another cross-school team of Carnegie Mellon University and University of Miami are the recipients of Honorable Mentions.
NCKU research team is the only team from East Asia and the only Chinese team that received the award.
Since 2003 fall, Associate Prof. I-Lin Wang has supervised students in winning 13 awards in master thesis or paper competitions and 4 awards in undergraduate student projects or paper competitions hosted by the OR Society of Taiwan (ORSTW), Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineering (CIIE) or DHL.
Associate Prof. Wang has also received the best poster award in the OR subdivision of the NSC Industrial Engineering division in 2009, and he is also a member of the Railway Research Center of NCKU.
By receiving Honorable Mentions in this competitive international competition, Prof. I-Lin Wang has proved that National Cheng Kung University and researchers in Taiwan do have the capability and potential to conduct in-depth research.
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