Abstract: A method and apparatus selects a period of time for evaluating process resources and lots to be processed by the process resources. Selected lots and selected process resource are chosen that are available to be processed by the process resource and that are available to process the selected lots respectively. For each of the combination of selected process and selected lots a tool score and a lot score is determine and combined in order to select a winning score. The factory is controlled through the process resource in accordance with the winning score.

Abstract: A method is provided for using a computer to select a travel route based on a selected performance criteria from a plurality of possible travel routes connecting a plurality of destinations. Information is input describing the location of each destination to be visited. For each pair of destinations, a connecting path having an optimum performance value based on the selected performance criteria is determined. An array of randomly ordered sequences is created with each sequence representing a unique ordering of the destinations to be visited. For each sequence, the optimum performance values for each connecting path of each pair of destinations are summed to obtain a total performance value for the routes described by the sequence. A genetic cellular automaton is iteratively applied to the array to determine the travel route having the selected performance criteria by computing a near optimum sequence of destinations.