Large databases of scanned documents (medical records, legal texts, historical documents) require natural language processing for retrieval and structured information extraction. Errors caused by the optical character recognition (OCR) system increase ambiguity of recognized text and decrease performance of natural language processing. The paper proposes OCR post correction system with parametrized string distance metric. The correction system learns specific error patterns from incorrect words and common sequences of correct words. A smoothing technique is proposed to assign non-zero probability to edit operations not present in the training corpus. Spelling correction accuracy is measured on database of OCR legal documents in English language. Language model and learning string metric with smoothing improves Viterbi-based search for the best sequence of corrections and increases performance of the spelling correction system.

The efficient operation of logistic processes requires a wide range of design tasks to ensure efficient, flexible and reliable operation of connected production and service processes. Autonomous electric vehicles support the flexible in-plant supply of cyber-physical manufacturing systems. Within the frame of this article, the extension of the Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem with recharge stations is analyzed. The objective function of the optimization problem is the minimization of operation costs. The extension of 2E-VRP means that the second level vehicles (electric vehicles, must be recharged) come from one recharge station, then pick up the products from the satellite, visit the customers and return to the recharge station from where it started. We solved the route planning problem with the application of construction heuristics and improvement heuristics. The test results indicate that the combination of this approach provides a superior efficiency.

Vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a highly investigated discrete optimization problem. The first paper was published in 1959, and later, many vehicle routing problem variants appeared to simulate real logistical systems. Since vehicle routing problem is an NP-difficult task, the problem can be solved by approximation algorithms. Metaheuristics give a “good” result within an “acceptable” time. When developing a new metaheuristic algorithm, researchers usually use only their intuition and test results to verify the efficiency of the algorithm, comparing it to the efficiency of other algorithms. However, it may also be necessary to analyze the search operators of the algorithms for deeper investigation. The fitness landscape is a tool for that purpose, describing the possible states of the search space, the neighborhood operator, and the fitness function. The goal of fitness landscape analysis is to measure the complexity and efficiency of the applicable operators. The paper aims to investigate the fitness landscape of a complex vehicle routing problem. The efficiency of the following operators is investigated: 2-opt, order crossover, partially matched crossover, cycle crossover. The results show that the most efficient one is the 2-opt operator. Based on the results of fitness landscape analysis, we propose a novel traveling salesman problem genetic algorithm optimization variant where the edges are the elementary units having a fitness value. The optimal route is constructed from the edges having good fitness value. The fitness value of an edge depends on the quality of the container routes. Based on the performed comparison tests, the proposed method significantly dominates many other optimization approaches.

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a highly investigated logistics problem. VRP can model in-plant and out-plant material handling or a whole supply chain. The first Vehicle Routing Problem article was published in 1959 by Dantzig and Ramser, and many varieties of VRP have appeared since then. Transport systems are becoming more and more customized these days, so it is necessary to develop a general system that covers many transport tasks. Based on the literature, several components of VRP have appeared, but the development of an integrated system with all components has not yet been completed by the researchers. An integrated system can be useful because it is easy to configure; many transportation tasks can be easily modeled with its help. Our purpose is to present a generalized VRP model and show, in the form of case studies, how many transport tasks the system can model by including (omitting) each component. In this article, a generalized system is introduced, which covers the main VRP types that have appeared over the years. In the introduction, the basic Vehicle Routing Problem is presented, where the most important Vehicle Routing Problem components published so far are also detailed. The paper also gives the mathematical model of the generalization of the Vehicle Routing Problem and some case studies of the model are presented.

The paper aims to investigate the basin of attraction map of a complex Vehicle Routing Problem with random walk analysis. The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a common discrete optimization problem in field of logistics. In the case of the base VRP, the positions of one single depot and many customers (which have product demands) are given. The vehicles and their capacity limits are also fixed in the system and the objective function is the minimization of the length of the route. In the literature, many approaches have appeared to simulate the transportation demands. Most of the approaches are using some kind of metaheuristics. Solving the problems with metaheuristics requires exploring the fitness landscape of the optimization problem. The fitness landscape analysis consists of the investigation of the following elements: the set of the possible states, the fitness function and the neighborhood relationship. We use also metaheuristics are used to perform neighborhood discovery depending on the neighborhood interpretation. In this article, the following neighborhood operators are used for the basin of attraction map: 2-opt, Order Crossover (OX), Partially Matched Crossover (PMX), Cycle Crossover (CX). Based on our test results, the 2-opt and Partially Matched Crossover operators are more efficient than the Order Crossover and Cycle Crossovers.