优化业务流程中的活动批处理策略,平衡等待时间与成本。
Optimization of Activity Batching Policies in Business Processes
- 基于干预启发式生成新批处理策略,逐步优化多目标权衡
- 通过模拟评估干预效果,实现等待时间、成本等多指标改进
- 适合流程管理、运筹优化领域研究者参考
在业务流程中,活动批处理指将多个活动实例打包联合执行。批处理使管理者能在成本与处理效率之间权衡:大而少的批次可降低单位处理成本并分摊固定成本,但增加等待时间;小而频繁的批次减少等待,却提升固定成本和处理开销。批处理策略定义了活动实例如何分组及批次何时启动。本文提出一种帕累托优化方法,从一组(可能为空)现有批处理策略出发,通过干预启发式为每个批处理活动生成替代策略。每种启发式识别一个优化机会(针对等待时间、处理时间、成本或资源利用率),并给出相应的策略调整(干预)。干预效果通过仿真评估。这些启发式被嵌入元启发式算法中,迭代更新已发现的帕累托前沿。本文考察三种元启发式:爬山法、模拟退火和强化学习。实验对比了基于启发式的方案与相同元启发式基线在收敛性、解集多样性及周期时间收益方面的表现。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
In business processes, activity batching refers to packing multiple activity instances for joint execution. Batching allows managers to trade off cost and processing effort against waiting time. Larger and less frequent batches may lower costs by reducing processing effort and amortizing fixed costs, but they create longer waiting times. In contrast, smaller and more frequent batches reduce waiting times but increase fixed costs and processing effort. A batching policy defines how activity instances are grouped into batches and when each batch is activated. This paper addresses the problem of discovering batching policies that strike optimal trade-offs between waiting time, processing effort, and cost. The paper proposes a Pareto optimization approach that starts from a given set (possibly empty) of activity batching policies and generates alternative policies for each batched activity via intervention heuristics. Each heuristic identifies an opportunity to improve an activity's batching policy with respect to a metric (waiting time, processing time, cost, or resource utilization) and an associated adjustment to the activity's batching policy (the intervention). The impact of each intervention is evaluated via simulation. The intervention heuristics are embedded in an optimization meta-heuristic that triggers interventions to iteratively update the Pareto front of the interventions identified so far. The paper considers three meta-heuristics: hill-climbing, simulated annealing, and reinforcement learning. An experimental evaluation compares the proposed approach based on intervention heuristics against the same (non-heuristic guided) meta-heuristics baseline regarding convergence, diversity, and cycle time gain of Pareto-optimal policies.
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