Abstract
This paper presents a Swarm based Cooperation Mechanism for scheduling optimization. We intend to conceptualize real manufacturing systems as interacting autonomous entities in order to support decision making in agile manufacturing environments. Agents coordinate their actions automatically without human supervision considering a common objective - global scheduling solution taking advantages from collective behavior of species through implicit and explicit cooperation. The performance of the cooperation mechanism will be evaluated consider implicit cooperation at first stage through ACS, PSO and ABC algorithms and explicit through cooperation mechanism application.

Abstract
In this paper we present a user-centered interface for a scheduling system. The purpose of this interface is to provide graphical and interactive ways of defining a scheduling problem. To create such user interface an evaluation-centered user interaction development method was adopted: the star life cycle. The created prototype comprises the Task Module and the Scheduling Problem Module. The first one allows users to define a sequence of operations, i.e., a task. The second one enables a scheduling problem definition, which consists in a set of tasks. Both modules are equipped with a set of real time validations to assure the correct definition of the necessary data input for the scheduling module of the system. The usability evaluation allowed us to measure the ease of interaction and observe the different forms of interaction provided by each participant, namely the reactions to the real time validation mechanism.

Abstract
Metaheuristics performance is highly dependent of the respective parameters which need to be tuned. Parameter tuning may allow a larger flexibility and robustness but requires a careful initialization. The process of defining which parameters setting should be used is not obvious. The values for parameters depend mainly on the problem, the instance to be solved, the search time available to spend in solving the problem, and the required quality of solution. This paper presents a learning module proposal for an autonomous parameterization of Metaheuristics, integrated on a Multi-Agent System for the resolution of Dynamic Scheduling problems. The proposed learning module is inspired on Autonomic Computing Self-Optimization concept, defining that systems must continuously and proactively improve their performance. For the learning implementation it is used Case-based Reasoning, which uses previous similar data to solve new cases. In the use of Case-based Reasoning it is assumed that similar cases have similar solutions. After a literature review on topics used, both AutoDynAgents system and Self-Optimization module are described. Finally, a computational study is presented where the proposed module is evaluated, obtained results are compared with previous ones, some conclusions are reached, and some future work is referred. It is expected that this proposal can be a great contribution for the self-parameterization of Metaheuristics and for the resolution of scheduling problems on dynamic environments.

Abstract
Current Manufacturing Systems challenges due to international economic crisis, market globalization and e-business trends, incites the development of intelligent systems to support decision making, which allows managers to concentrate on high-level tasks management while improving decision response and effectiveness towards manufacturing agility. This paper presents a novel negotiation mechanism for dynamic scheduling based on social and collective intelligence. Under the proposed negotiation mechanism, agents must interact and collaborate in order to improve the global schedule. Swarm Intelligence (SI) is considered a general aggregation term for several computational techniques, which use ideas and inspiration from the social behaviors of insects and other biological systems. This work is primarily concerned with negotiation, where multiple self-interested agents can reach agreement over the exchange of operations on competitive resources. Experimental analysis was performed in order to validate the influence of negotiation mechanism in the system performance and the SI technique. Empirical results and statistical evidence illustrate that the negotiation mechanism influence significantly the overall system performance and the effectiveness of Artificial Bee Colony for makespan minimization and on the machine occupation maximization.

Abstract
This paper describes some developing issues for ACS based software tools to support decision making process and solve the problem of generating a sequence of jobs that minimizes the total weighted tardiness for a set of jobs to be processed in a single machine. An Ant Colony System (ACS) based algorithm performance is validated with benchmark problems available in the OR library. The obtained results were compared with the optimal (best available results in some cases) and permit to conclude about ACS efficiency and effectiveness. The ACS performance and respective statistical significance was evaluated. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Abstract
In the digital world, the demand for better interactions between subscribers and companies is growing, creating the need for personalized and individualized experiences. With the exponential growth of email usage over the years, broad flows of campaigns are sent and received by subscribers, which reveals itself to be a problem for both companies and subscribers. In this work, subscribers are segmented by their behaviors and profiles, such as (i) open rates, (ii) click-through rates, (iii) frequency, and (iv) period of interactions with the companies. Different regressions are used: (i) Random Forest Regressor, (ii) Multiple Linear Regression, (iii) K-Neighbors Regressor, and (iv) Support Vector Regressor. All these regressions' results were aggregated into a final prediction achieved by an ensemble approach, which uses averaging and stacking methods. The use of Long Short-Term Memory is also considered in the presented case. The stacking model obtained the best performance, with an R-2 score of 0.91 and a Mean Absolute Error of 0.204. This allows us to estimate the week's days with a half-day error difference. This work presents promising results for subscriber segmentation based on profile information for predicting the best period for email marketing. In the future, subscribers can be segmented using the Recency, Frequency and Monetary value, the Lifetime Value, or Stream Clustering approaches that allow more personalized and tailored experiences for subscribers. The latter tracks segments over time without costly recalculations and handles continuous streams of new observations without the necessity to recompile the entire model.