Road-Map to Bridge Theoretical and Practical Approaches for Elevator Operations

In this paper, we propose a road-map to bridge theoretical and practical approaches in the discipline of the elevator operation problem (EOP). The theoretical approach is to obtain optimal solutions for static EOPs, here “static” means all information on users of the elevator system is known before scheduling. The practical approach is to construct rule-bases for realistic situations. The proposed road-map is comprised of 5 stages: (1) to obtain a formally-optimal solution for a problem instance of a static EOP, (2) to construct a statically-peculiar optimal rule-base from the optimal solution, (3) to construct a dynamically-peculiar optimal rule-base which is effective for the problem instance and functions on a continuous elevator system, (4) to construct a dynamically-narrow rule-base which is effective for a set of problem instances, and (5) to construct a dynamically-wide rule-base which is effective for various sets of problem instances. In computer illustrations, preliminary verification on earlier stages are displayed.