Time-critical testing and search problems

Alessandro Agnetis, Ben Hermans, Roel Leus and Salim Rostami

European Journal of Operational Research, 2022, vol. 296, issue 2, 440-452

Abstract: This paper introduces a problem in which the state of a system needs to be determined through costly tests of its components by a limited number of testing units and before a given deadline. We also consider a closely related search problem in which there are multiple searchers to find a target before a given deadline. These natural generalizations of the classical sequential testing problem and search problem are applicable in a wide range of time-critical operations such as machine maintenance, diagnosing a patient, and new product development. We show that both problems are NP-hard, develop a pseudo-polynomial dynamic program for the special case of two time slots, and describe a partial-order-based as well as an assignment-based mixed integer program for the general case. Based on extensive computational experiments, we find that the assignment-based formulation performs better than the partial-order-based formulation for the testing variant, but that this is the other way round for the search variant. Finally, we propose a pairwise-interchange-based local search procedure and show that, empirically, it performs very well in finding near-optimal solutions.

Keywords: Scheduling; System testing; Search theory; Complexity theory; Integer programming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:296:y:2022:i:2:p:440-452

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2021.03.038

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