This paper describes an innovative approach to optimize the delivery process using genetic algorithms. The focus of the study is on the two-stage process: first, the process of allocating the salesmen to the customer in such a way that the total time required for visiting all points gets minimized; the second process is the optimization process of allocating suppliers to the customers that would minimize the shortage or overage of the product. The algorithms use balance load vertical crossover and equivalent mutation. Algorithms tested on real data include customers’ locations; they include the time needed for a journey along with any number of other real-life use cases. This study explores logistics optimization possibilities, focusing on the potential of genetic algorithms to address modern supply chain optimization challenges.

This paper explores the impact of different strategies for generating initial populations on the outcomes of genetic algorithms. The primary objective of this research is to execute a genetic algorithm using various initial population generation strategies and to develop tailored recommendations for a specific business scenario. This scenario involves the use of sanitary inspections aimed at curbing the spread of food-borne disease epidemics. Through this study, we analyze how sanitary inspection activities contribute to the prevention of food-borne illnesses. The paper provides a detailed description of the problem-solving approach utilized, along with a comprehensive explanation of the genetic algorithm implementation. Moreover, it extends to a discussion on the importance of initial population selection in influencing the efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithm. The culmination of this research is a set of practical recommendations, derived from numerical analyses, intended to guide future applications of genetic algorithms in similar contexts.

Public health inspectors play a critical role in controlling food-borne disease outbreaks. However, their ability to effectively manage these events can be hampered by limitations in task scheduling. This study addresses this challenge by investigating the specific issues inspectors face when planning their activities during an outbreak. We identify key areas for improvement and propose a comprehensive roadmap to guide public health inspectors in optimizing their activities. Additionally, this research delves into specific task scheduling problems commonly encountered by inspectors during outbreaks. By addressing these challenges, we aim to equip public health inspectors with the tools and strategies necessary to control foodborne disease outbreaks and protect public health more efficiently.

This paper explores the efficiency and performance of business processes involved in contract flow. We leverage simulation techniques to analyze various parameters that impact contract flow, extending beyond just efficiency. The simulation model encompasses the entire contract lifecycle, allowing us to identify bottlenecks and assess the impact of different process configurations. Our investigation examines a range of performance indicators, including efficiency, cost, and cycle time. The results provide valuable insights for organizations seeking to optimize their contract flow processes and achieve improved performance.

This article describes the functional scope of a low-code development platform for modeling and implementation of business processes to support outbreak investigations.LCDP (Low-Code Development Platforms) are development tools that allow you to create applications using a minimum amount of traditional programming code. They help speed up the software development process by reducing the need to write manual code and enabling the development of applications using visual interfaces, ready-made components, and configuration rules. They can also support business process management through various mechanisms. LCDP platforms can help build applications that support Business Process Management through visual modeling of processes, the use of ready-made components, automation mechanisms that enable the performance of specific activities or decisions as part of a business process, easy integration of various external systems, which may be necessary for business processes that require cooperation with multiple tools and applications, providing mechanisms for monitoring the course of business processes and generating reports on performance, duration and other parameters, and enabling business analysts to participate in the application development process, because they do not require deep programming knowledge.The article presents the basic functionality of the platform and refers to such architectural assumptions as integrated process management, remote access, security, reliability, flexibility, openness to integration, reporting, registers, and monitoring.Particular attention was paid to the issues of modeling business processes and building applications to support activities related to epidemic investigation during an epidemic of poisonings and foodborne diseases.Epidemiological investigation to cut the paths of epidemics of poisoning and foodborne diseases is an important process to identify, control, and prevent the further spread of the disease. This process aims to understand where the infection came from, what factors led to the outbreak, and how it can be stopped. The first step is to recognize and report an outbreak or increase in foodborne illness. This can be done by analyzing epidemiological data, e.g. reports on illnesses and hospitalizations. Detailed information is then collected from patients about their symptoms, food history, places visited, food eaten, contacts with others, etc. It is important to identify common factors and sources that may be related to the disease. The next phase is analyzing the collected data to identify trends, patterns, and potential sources of the outbreak. This may include the analysis of time-disease curves, the identification of geographic disease clusters, or the analysis of consumption clusters of specific products. Based on the analysis of data, epidemiologists create hypotheses about the possible sources of infection or ways of transmitting the disease. This may include identifying specific foods, restaurants, suppliers, or water sources. To verify the hypotheses and identify the source of the epidemic, field studies are carried out, including microbiological tests of food samples, the environment, and samples from patients and people suspected of being infected. Once the source of the outbreak has been identified, action is taken to control and disrupt transmission routes. These actions consist of withdrawing contaminated products from the market, closing the source of contamination (e.g. a restaurant), and implementing hygiene and safety measures. After an epidemic intervention, monitoring of the situation continues to confirm the effectiveness of the actions and to ensure that the epidemic has been stopped. Investigation, intervention, and outcome information is also reported to relevant public health agencies.The developed platform was used as a programming base to develop a support system for the above-mentioned activities of the State Sanitary Inspection, allowing for the detection of threats and cutting the paths of spreading the epidemic.

Nowadays, companies that operate efficiently cover a wide range of different fields of activity, such as finance, logistics, or human resources. Each of the aforementioned aspects produces its own data sets that form the basis for how the company operates. These different fields are often intertwined, requiring data from various modules. This requires the standardization of generated data, leading to the conclusion that one of the most important aspects of running a business is a cooperation between its internal systems. It allows for avoiding inconsistencies in data, which may have very adverse effects, especially for enterprises that operate in multiple fields. Such cooperation is achieved by integrating applications supporting all fields of activity pursued by the enterprise into one cohesive whole. In light of the aspect mentioned above, the article elaborates on the challenges and benefits of said integration, showing it the example of possibilities offered by the SAP environment. Attention was primarily focused on integration between different elements of the finance module which, according to the authors, can deliver the greatest benefits by being combined into a single cohesive whole. An example of JPK-FA file generation, as one of the components of that system, was discussed. The properties of that solution as well as the direct benefits of using that application were discussed. Studies were conducted to demonstrate the speed of the applied technology, which significantly accelerates the operation of the enterprise in the field selected by the authors.

This paper shows the modeling and analysis of processes associated with the spread of the epidemic of food-borne diseases. The aim of this study was to show how to test the characteristics of the processes associated with the spread of the epidemic of food-borne diseases. Using formal models and methods the epidemic of food-borne diseases is investigated. The activities of sanitary inspection are considered. It is shown how to obtain various characteristics related to operations of inspection operations during the epidemic of food-borne diseases. The result of the work are models of processes related to the activities of sanitary inspection during the epidemic of food-borne diseases. This allows analyzing the activities of sanitary inspection in preventing the spread of food-borne illness. Models are also formal description of the activities of sanitary inspection.

The article shows a certain methodology for investigating the properties of real processes described by business processes. Studying the properties of a business process allows you to evaluate various properties of a real process. The study of the business process takes place in a Low-code platform. This gives the opportunity to study the properties of processes even for people who do not know the methods and technologies of programming, in particular the design and implementation of computer simulators.In this case, the process that is related to the flow of internal electronic documents in the organization is considered. The process begins when there is a need to prepare an internal electronic document in an organization. The flow of electronic internal documents can be initiated by various persons. The new document can be information for staff, decisions, or announcements. Electronic internal documents during the flow can be modified, submitted for approval, completed, saved in the knowledge base, canceled, etc. The process ends by saving the document to the knowledge base.The number of internal electronic documents sent during the day is usually very large. Therefore, it is worth considering improving the flow of internal documents in the organization. Supporting the process of electronic internal documents flow will make it easier for employees to prepare, distribute, modify, accept and, as a result, save such documents in the knowledge base. A process of internal electronic document flow is constructed. Its equivalent in the Low-code platform is also presented. This platform has a built-in simulator. Simulation experiments allow us to analyze various dynamic properties of real processes described by business processes. Business processes and their elements can be described by many various characteristics such as random streams of internal document generation, execution times of detailed tasks, probabilities of certain events controlling the flow of documents, costs of tasks, work schedules of individual employees, parameters of shared resources, organizational structure, etc.Simulation of internal electronic documents flow in a Low-code platform allows to obtain results for various values of characteristics defined in the model. This gives the opportunity to examine the characteristics of the internal electronic document flow process itself, find bottlenecks, lack of appropriate resources, etc. Such an analysis is very important from the point of view of the human factor in relation to the employees of the organization.As a result of a series of simulation experiments, several interesting characteristics related to the internal electronic document flow can be obtained. Interesting statistics are shown related to the execution times of various types of actions, their execution costs, and waiting times for various steps of the document flow. For employees participating in the electronic internal documents flow, their time load on individual tasks in this area can be determined. It is possible to show (indicate) those actions that are activated most often or those that are activated rarely. The degree of the use of resources in the process of electronic internal document flow may also be interesting. A few characteristics can be displayed in tabular or graph form easy to analyze and evaluate. It is important that the real process is described in the form of a business process, and it is easy to construct by a person from outside the IT sector. This is important from the point of view of considering the human factor in this activity.Finally, the article shows the methodology of proceeding in the case of construction, simulation and efficiency, time, and cost analysis of detailed processes of the organization's functioning. Such a methodology allows for the improvement of processes in the organization, including the consideration of the human factor in such processes.

The article describes the implementation of applications dedicated for conducting interviews with patients and inspection of food serving and selling objects during an epidemic of foodborne diseases. Interviews with patients and objects inspections must be conducted in a relatively short time. Then, the dates, places and nutritional content of eating food are determined within a fixed number of days before the first symptoms of illness. The people with whom the food was eaten are also recorded. The number of patients to be interviewed is relatively large compared to the number of sanitary inspectors. Therefore, there is a need to establish a schedule for interviews. This must be done in the shortest possible time to determine the sources of spreading the disease as quickly as possible. Every day, new patients arrive dynamically, so the process of modifying the interview schedule is permanent. In result of interview the list of objects to inspected is received. Such a problem for epidemics of foodborne diseases is not considered in the literature.

The article focuses on the issue of assigning instructors to courses in class planning. Many universities and schools face the problem of assigning teachers to courses. These decisions largely contribute to ensuring an appropriate class schedule and the efficiency of work performed by teachers and the quality of teaching. As the number of teachers and courses increases, universities are facing a growing problem of how to assign teachers appropriately to instructors, so as to ensure the highest teaching efficiency possible. This article presents a mathematical model that expands on the classic staff assignment model by adding additional restrictions and introducing a new target function. The presented target function seeks to minimise variance in the result of the assignment of each instructor to requisitions, as it is the ratio of assigned hours to the overall salary of the instructor. A genetic algorithm was implemented on the basis of the mathematical model.

The chapter describes the organization of simulation exercises for sanitary services. It is assumed that there is an epidemic of foodborne diseases. Teams of sanitary inspectors conduct simulation exercises to improve the procedures used in the epidemic. The AAR (after action review) module allows us to analyze the course of simulation exercises. The work of the sanitary services allows controlling an epidemic of foodborne diseases. The chapter contains a description of business processes modeling sanitary services activities. The basic organizational elements related to simulation exercises are also shown. The method of conducting simulation exercises and the analysis of the results of these exercises are presented.

The paper presents business processes related to the work of sanitary services in cases of an epidemic of foodborne diseases. On their basis, simulation exercises according to given scenarios were developed. The work is related to the implementation of a project financed by the National Center for Research and Development. The activities of the staff of the county-level State Sanitary Inspectorate were analyzed in terms of actions taken in crisis situations related to the emergence of a large food poisoning outbreak or an epidemic of food-borne infectious disease. The same analysis was carried out in the scope of actions performed by individual teams participating in the simulation exercises. The result of the analysis was presented in the form of business process diagrams made in BPMN notation. The architecture of the simulation exercise support system assumes the use of a number of components responsible for the preparation of data and exercise scenarios, the implementation of exercises in training teams, supervision by exercise management, monitoring of the current course of the exercise, and review after activities.Business processes perfectly illustrate what activities are performed by individual groups of people during exercises and allow for monitoring and measuring indicators of the team’s work effectiveness. Business processes have been divided into two groups of processes. The first group of processes concerns activities performed only by persons exercising. These are processes that describe the activities performed during an epidemiological inquiry. In this case, describing the activities in the form of a process allows the practitioners to increase the speed of reaction in making decisions that directly affect the course of the investigation because they have at their disposal the entire range of data processed by the process along with the full picture of the situation.The second group of business processes describes the activities of the teams for preparing exercises, play-offs, and evaluating the results in the form of a simulation exercise scenario. The activities listed in this group of processes allow the participants of the above-mentioned teams for the efficient management of the tasks of the training team, for monitoring their activities, and for full control of the simulation. The training preparation team receives tasks related to the preparation of the environment and data for a given exercise scenario and the commissioning of individual system components at the start of the simulation exercises. The play-off team receives tasks related to the preparation of answers to the questions of the practitioners, reactions to decisions made by the practitioner team, and the control of the simulation time. The results analysis team receives tasks related to the analysis of the history of processes, the analysis of decisions and actions, the assessment of the course of exercises, and the skills of the training team. Each team receives a full range of data processed by individual processes in this group.The processes of both groups are interconnected. Activities undertaken by the training team within the processes of the first group directly affect the appearance of activities in the processes of the second group. Mutual communication within the performed tasks allows for simulation exercises in accordance with the modeled exercise scenario. The simulation exercise support system records each action and decision of the participants in the history of the processes along with the exact timestamp and a record of who performed the action. The concept of the AAR subsystem (after action review) is based on historical data of tasks performed within the framework of the processes, enabling the reconstruction of the course of the exercise with the possibility of starting the exercise from a selected moment. The paper will also present the methodology of designing interfaces for a system of computer-aided simulation exercises.

The article presents the concept of a data-driven machine learning system increasing the efficiency of the process of supporting the distribution of goods and services, which arises as a result of the R&D project implemented within the framework of the Operational Programme Smart Development (EU) 2014-2020, financed by National Centre for Research and Development in Poland. The solutions obtained within the presented concept will eventually become components of the Distribution Optimization System, which will be applied on the transport and logistics services market. The elements of the presented concept are geocoding algorithms (i.e. precise calculation of the delivery address, based on the transmitted information), route calculation algorithms (solving the modified VRPTW problem in stochastic time-dependent networks) and distribution region optimization algorithms, as well as smart tracking device monitoring vehicle traffic parameters, characterized by extremely long autonomous operation time (on batteries) and resistance to GPS interference.

The article describes a solution for monitoring the presence and movement of workers between production halls in the factory. The physical structure of the monitoring system components based on RFID antennas and chips embedded in every clothing element of an employee is presented. The hardware and software architecture of the solution is also presented and described in the article. Particular attention was paid to the algorithmic issues related to the detection of ambiguities resulting from human-machine cooperation. A number of problems resulting from different behavior of employees and their interpretation on the basis of readings for individual elements of their work attire have been solved.

We present logistic support architecture of real simulation training system for military troops preparing to conduct battle operations at a level up to a whole battalion. Due to the need of cost reduction of system maintenance, the system components were designed to be easily serviced with an integrated supply chain support. A framework of multi-period multi-level multi-item production planning models with open and closed loop supply chains is introduced in the paper. Open loop supply chain (OLSC) and closed loop supply chain (CLSC) support alternatively production planning (PP) processes. In CLSC, a PP process is supported by the products recovery processes made in a closed loop chain. A computational complexity involved in preparing production plans for a long planning horizon is important problem when solving these models, so the model optimised for quick solution finding is presented. Most elements of the presented models are common for the military and civil industry.

The article presents a solution to the problem of performing some specific tasks in business processes. More specifically, the problem is that there are tasks that are performed by people outside the main business process automation system. Such tasks require building a separate runtime environment and providing all necessary data to complete these tasks. The purpose of creating the external business process tasks is either to collect data from an external participant of the process or to provide the external participant of the process with certain information that is expected by him. The solution described in the article has been implemented and tested in practice as a system of cooperation with clients of a company dealing with the design, production and rental of workwear.

The paper presents business processes business process models in the area of contract management in a workwear rental and laundry service company. The presented diagrams are the result of the analytical work performed by the multidisciplinary team of experts. The team consists of IT specialist, subject-matter experts and employees of the rental company. Business models presented in the article are described in accordance with the assumptions of BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation). The models of the rental company's activities were created in the ARTS software environment, where the simulation of all necessary operations was carried out. As the result of simulation experiments a number of interesting parameters were obtained. There is no possibility to obtain these parameters in the static analysis of a business process. They can be only determined by the dynamic analysis. A sample results show the frequency of various significant events, accumulated time corresponding to activities performance, number of actions being performed by different people, overall working time for employees, the degree of the human factor use, and the global cost connected with different activities. The following process models have been developed, simulated and optimized: Release of an employee, Locker room change request, Clothing size change request for an employee, Cabinet location change request, Clothing sets amount change request, Personal data change, Employment process, Registration of the own clothing for an employee, New cabinet order, New set of keys set up, Transfer of an employee, Clothing repair request. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Service Oriented Architecture is popular in many organizations. In particular, it has already deeply rooted in large corporations that need to automate entire business processes and implement them in many systems. It has a unique feature that allows unambiguously indicate service that is to realise business process step. That indication is possible to show directly in BPMN diagram. Thus, it is possible to trace which server has used resources to implement the service and how much of those resources were needed. Therefore, it is possible to build an optimization task that, with limited and unreliable resources, will determine such allocation of components to servers and such an algorithm for assigning tasks to them, so that the processes will work as well as possible. The article presents a model of such an optimization task. This model consists of four layers. The Organization Layer describes the system environment – the types and frequency of initiating business process instances. The Integration Layer describes the business processes and indicates the services that should be performed at every step. The Component Layer describes component characteristics and what services they provide. In Server Layer both: server characteristics and runtime environments necessary for the component to run are described. Finally, the optimization task and evaluation criteria are formulated.

The paper presents system architecture for the RFID-equipped restricted access administrative office. All the facilities in the administrative office are equipped with RFID readers placed in cabinets, desks, copiers and entrance sluices to allow immediately read of documents that are within their reach. Presented hardware and software components as well as business and simulation models are result of analytical work performed by the group of experts. The team was composed of specialist in different fields, such as document management, IT, data security, radio frequency identification, etc. In addition to the hardware and software architectures, an approach to system evaluation based on computer simulation is also presented.