Real-Time Neural Network Scheduling of Emergency Medical Mask Production during COVID-19

During the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), there is a huge demand for medical masks. A mask manufacturer often receives a large amount of orders that are beyond its capability. Therefore, it is of critical importance for the manufacturer to schedule mask production tasks as efficiently as possible. However, existing scheduling methods typically require a considerable amount of computational resources and, therefore, cannot effectively cope with the surge of orders. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end neural network for scheduling real-time production tasks. The neural network takes a sequence of production tasks as inputs to predict a distribution over different schedules, employs reinforcement learning to optimize network parameters using the negative total tardiness as the reward signal, and finally produces a high-quality solution to the scheduling problem. We applied the proposed approach to schedule emergency production tasks for a medical mask manufacturer during the peak of COVID-19 in China. Computational results show that the neural network scheduler can solve problem instances with hundreds of tasks within seconds. The objective function value (i.e., the total weighted tardiness) produced by the neural network scheduler is significantly better than those of existing constructive heuristics, and is very close to those of the state-of-the-art metaheuristics whose computational time is unaffordable in practice.

Intelligent Optimization of Diversified Community Prevention of COVID-19 using Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has played an important role in the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), and community prevention has become the most essential part in reducing the spread risk and protecting populations. However, most communities use a uniform TCM prevention program for all residents, which violates the "treatment based on syndrome differentiation" principle of TCM and limits the effectiveness of prevention. In this paper, we propose an intelligent optimization method to develop diversified TCM prevention programs for community residents. First, we use a fuzzy clustering method to divide the population based on both modern medicine and TCM health characteristics; we then use an interactive optimization method, in which TCM experts develop different TCM prevention programs for different clusters, and a heuristic algorithm is used to optimize the programs under the resource constraints. We demonstrate the computational efficiency of the proposed method and report its successful application to TCM-based prevention of COVID-19 in 12 communities in Zhejiang province, China, during the peak of the pandemic.