A Lexicographic Nelder–Mead simulation optimization method to solve multi-criteria problems

Simulation optimization is an approach that is used to solve problems involving stochastic components. This paper presents a Lexicographic Nelder–Mead (LNM) based simulation optimization (LNM-SO) method to solve multi-criteria simulation optimization problems. The method is designed to be relatively easy-to-implement and be applicable to a wide range of problem domains. To effectively evaluate the overall performance of this method, a Time-Quality Estimator (TQE) was developed to evaluate the performance of LNM-SO in terms of both quality of solution and computational speed. Computational results of five different test problems showed that the method was highly effective.