Abstract
The paper presents a methodology for the analysis of just-in-time production systems that are expected to deliver a fixed quantity of parts to its customers on a periodical basis, and whose equipment is submitted to random failure and repair processes. The methodology is based on the determination of the density function of T-H, the cumulated halting time of the production system between deliveries. The paper firstly shows how this function can be obtained from the internal structure of the system and individual equipment failure processes. Then, it shows how the reliability of the deliveries, and several production costs, e.g., extra work, delivery failures penalties, loss of sales profit, and safety stocks, may be assessed using this function. The practical application and usefulness of the methodology is illustrated in the final part of the paper for a typical production system of the automotive industry.

Abstract
In this paper a Branch-and-Bound (BB) algorithm is developed to obtain an optimal solution to the single source uncapacitated minimum cost Network Flow Problem (NFP) with general concave costs. Concave NFPs are NP-Hard, even for the simplest version therefore, there is a scarcity of exact methods to address them in their full generality. The BB algorithm presented here can be used to solve optimally single source uncapacitated minimum cost NFPs with any kind of concave arc costs. The bounding is based on the computation of lower bounds derived from state space relaxations of a dynamic programming formulation. The relaxations, which are the subject of the paper (Fontes et al., 2005b) and also briefly discussed here, involve the use of non-injective mapping functions, which guarantee a reduction on the cardinality of the state space. Branching is performed by either fixing an arc as part of the final solution or by removing it from the final solution. Computational results are reported and compared to available alternative methods for addressing the same type of problems. It could be concluded that our BB algorithm has better performance and the results have also shown evidence that it has a sub-exponential time growth.

Abstract
In this paper we study the problem of constructing accurate decision tree models from data streams. Data streams are incremental tasks that require incremental, online, and any-time learning algorithms. One of the most successful algorithms for mining data streams is VFDT. We have extended VFDT in three directions: the ability to deal with continuous data; the use of more powerful classification techniques at tree leaves, and the ability to detect and react to concept drift. VFDTc system can incorporate and classify new information online, with a single scan of the data, in time constant per example. The most relevant property of our system is the ability to obtain a performance similar to a standard decision tree algorithm even for medium size datum. This is relevant due to the any-time property. We also extend VFDTc with the ability to deal with concept drift, by continuously monitoring differences between two class-distribution of the examples: the distribution when a node was built and the distribution in a time window of the most recent examples. We study the sensitivity of VFDTc with respect to drift, noise, the order of examples, and the initial parameters in different problems and demonstrate its utility in large and medium data sets.

Abstract

Abstract
In this paper we analyse and evaluate several Scheduling Algorithms that are candidates to support Quality of Service and Service Integration in Sensor and Actuator Networks. They should satisfy two main goals: to guarantee committed delays for time sensitive services, and to improve the network transmission efficiency. The algorithms are described and some results, obtained by simulation, are presented. The proposed Traffic Class Oriented Algorithm proved to be a good solution to meet the proposed objectives as well as to integrate traffic generated by Fieldbus devices and control applications in real communication networks.

Abstract
In this paper we obtain Lower Bounds (LBs) to concave cost network flow problems. The LBs are derived from state space relaxations of a dynamic programming formulation, which involve the use of non-injective mapping functions guaranteing a reduction on the cardinality of the state space. The general state space relaxation procedure is extended to address problems involving transitions that go across several stages, as is the case of network flow problems. Applications for these LBs include: estimation of the quality of heuristic solutions; local search methods that use information of the LB solution structure to find initial solutions to restart the search (Fontes et al., 2003, Networks, 41, 221-228); and branch-and-bound (BB) methods having as a bounding procedure a modified version of the LB algorithm developed here, (see Fontes et al., 2005a). These LBs are iteratively improved by penalizing, in a Lagrangian fashion, customers not exactly satisfied or by performing state space modifications. Both the penalties and the state space are updated by using the subgradient method. Additional constraints are developed to improve further the LBs by reducing the searchable space. The computational results provided show that very good bounds can be obtained for concave cost network flow problems, particularly for fixed-charge problems.