Abstract
The Hub Location Problems (HLP) have gathered great interest due to the complexity and to the many applications in industry such as aviation, public transportation, telecommunications, among others. The HLP have many variants regarding allocation (single or multiple) and capacity (uncapacitated or capacitated). This paper presents a variant of the HLP, encompassing single allocation with capacity constraints. The Capacitated Single Allocation p-Hub Location Problem (CSApHLP) objective consists on determine the set of p hubs in a network that minimizes the total cost of allocating all the non-hub nodes to the p hubs. In this work, it is proposed a sophisticated RAMP approach (PD-RAMP) to improve the results obtained previously by the simple version (Dual-RAMP). Thus, a parallel implementation is conducted to assess the effectiveness of a parallel RAMP model applied to the CSApHLP. The first algorithm, the sequential PD-RAMP, incorporates Dual-RAMP with a Scatter Search procedure to create a Primal-Dual RAMP approach. The second algorithm, the parallel PD-RAMP, also take advantage of the dual and primal, parallelizing the primal side of the problem and interconnecting both sides as it is expected in the RAMP sequential algorithm. The quality of the results carried out on a standard testbed shows that the PD-RAMP approach managed to improve the state-of-the-art algorithms for the CSApHLP.

Abstract
Facility Location Problems (FLP) are complex combinatorial optimization problems whose general goal is to locate a set of facilities that serve a particular set of customers with minimum cost. Being NP-Hard problems, using exact methods to solve large instances of these problems can be seriously compromised by the high computational times required to obtain the optimal solution. To overcome this difficulty, a significant number of heuristic algorithms of various types have been proposed with the aim of finding good quality solutions in reasonable computational times. We propose a Scatter Search approach to solve effectively the Uncapacitated Facility Location Problem (UFLP). The algorithm was tested on the standard testbed for the UFLP obtained state-of-the-art results. Comparisons with current best-performing algorithms for the UFLP show that our algorithm exhibits excellent performance. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
This paper deals with a multi-objective location-routing problem (MO-LRP) and follows the idea of sectorization to simplify the solution approaches. The MO-LRP consists of sectorization, sub-sectorization, and routing sub-problems. In the sectorization sub-problem, a subset of potential distribution centres (DCs) is opened and a subset of customers is assigned to each of them. Each DC and the customers assigned to it form a sector. Afterward, in the sub-sectorization stage customers of each DC are divided into different sub-sector. Then, in the routing sub-problem, a route is determined and a vehicle is assigned to meet demands. To solve the problem, we design two approaches, which adapt the sectorization, sub-sectorization and routing sub-problems with the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) in two different manners. In the first approach, NSGA-II is used to find non-dominated solutions for all sub-problems, simultaneously. The second one is similar to the first one but it has a hierarchical structure, such that the routing sub-problem is solved with a solver for binary integer programming in MATLAB optimization toolbox after solving sectorization and sub-sectorization sub-problem with NSGA-II. Four benchmarks are used and based on a comparison between the obtained results it is shown that the first approach finds more non-dominated solutions. Therefore, it is concluded that the simultaneous approach is more effective than the hierarchical approach for the defined problem in terms of finding more non-dominated solutions. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.

Abstract
This paper addresses a new Mixed-model Assembly Line Sequencing Problem in the Footwear industry. This problem emerges in a large company, which benefits from advanced automated stitching systems. However, these systems need to be managed and optimised. Operators with varied abilities operate machines of various types, placed throughout the stitching lines. In different quantities, the components of the various shoe models, placed in boxes, move along the lines in either direction. The work assumes that the associated balancing problems have already been solved, thus solely concentrating on the sequencing procedures to minimise the makespan. An optimisation model is presented, but it has just been useful to structure the problems and test small instances due to the practical problems' complexity and dimension. Consequently, two methods were developed, one based on Variable Neighbourhood Descent, named VND-MSeq, and the other based on Genetic Algorithms, referred to as GA-MSeq. Computational results are included, referring to diverse instances and real large-size problems. These results allow for a comparison of the novel methods and to ascertain their effectiveness. We obtained better solutions than those available in the company.

Abstract
In this study, two novel stochastic models are introduced to solve the dynamic sectorization problem, in which sectors are created by assigning points to service centres. The objective function of the first model is defined based on the equilibration of the distance in the sectors, while in the second one, it is based on the equilibration of the demands of the sectors. Both models impose constraints on assignments and compactness of sectors. In the problem, the coordinates of the points and their demand change over time, hence it is called a dynamic problem. A new solution method is used to solve the models, in which expected values of the coordinates of the points and their demand are assessed by using the Monte Carlo simulation. Thus, the problem is converted into a deterministic one. The linear and deterministic type of the model, which is originally non-linear is implemented in Python's Pulp library and in this way the generated benchmarks are solved. Information about how benchmarks are derived and the obtained solutions are presented.

Abstract
In the last years, the paradigm of the Portuguese footwear industry has improved drastically to become one of the main world players. In fact, a lot has changed, from low-cost mass production to serving clients consisting of small retail chains, where orders are small and models are varied. In order to deal with such modifications, the footwear industry started investing in technological solutions. The industrial case presented in this paper fits that purpose. The goal is to contribute to the solution of complex scheduling problems arising in the new mixed-model flexible automatic stitching systems of an important footwear factory. The project starts by building an optimization model. Although the model has its own usefulness, the CPLEX program is only capable of reaching optimal solutions for small problem instances. Therefore, a recent metaheuristic, the Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA), has been chosen to tackle larger problems. The ICA is capable of finding optimal results for smaller instances and achieving adequate solutions for real problems in short periods of time. Moreover, ICA improves the results obtained so far by the method currently used in the factory.