Operations Research articles from January 2003

Operations Research archives from January 2003

Policy model for pollution control in the copper industry, including a model for the sulfuric acid market. (Practice).
January 1, 2003... In this paper we develop a policy model for pollution control investment and operational decisions in the copper industry. The system consists of (i) a nonlinear integer model to optimize smelter operations, including the investment decisions...

Strategic operations research and the Edelman Prize finalist applications 1989-1998. (Chronicle).
January 1, 2003... In an earlier study we examined the available evidence on the Edelman Prize finalist applications 1989-1998. This study concluded that 13 of the 42 private sector applications provide examples of strategic operations research (SOR) when SOR is...

A new approach to estimating the probability of winning the presidency. (Articles).
January 1, 2003... As the 2000 election so vividly showed, it is Electoral College standings rather than national popular votes that determine who becomes President. But current pre-election polls focus almost exclusively on the popular vote. Here we present a...

Auctions for procuring options.
January 1, 2003... We examine the mechanism-design problem for a single buyer to procure purchase options for a homogeneous good when that buyer is required to satisfy an unknown future demand. Suppliers have two-dimensional types in the form of commitment costs...

Optimal exercise policies and simulation-based valuation for American-Asian options.
January 1, 2003... American-Asian options are average-price options that allow early exercise. In this paper, we derive structural properties for the optimal exercise policy, which are then used to develop an efficient numerical algorithm for pricing such...

Wavelength routing and assignment in a survivable WDM mesh network.
January 1, 2003... All-optical networks with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) capabilities are prime candidates for future wide-area backbone networks. The simplified processing and management of these very high bandwidth networks make them very attractive....

A mixed complementarity model of hydrothermal electricity competition in the Western United States.
January 1, 2003... This paper presents a modeling framework for analyzing competition between multiple firms that each possess a mixture of hydroelectric and thermal generation resources. Based upon the concept of a Cournot oligopoly with a competitive fringe,...

Production planning with flexible product specifications: an application to specialty steel manufacturing.
January 1, 2003... Responding to varying customer needs for product customization, quantities, or lead times requires increased manufacturing flexibility. In certain contexts, the reverse is true, i.e., customer requirements are somewhat flexible, providing...

Due-date scheduling: asymptotic optimality of generalized longest queue and generalized largest delay rules.
January 1, 2003... Consider the following due-date scheduling problem in a multiclass, acyclic, single-station service system: Any class k job arriving at time must be served by its due date t + [D.sub.k]. Equivalently, its delay [T.sub.k] must not exceed a given...

Stabilizing batch-processing networks.
January 1, 2003... In a batch-processing network, multiple jobs can be formed into a batch to be processed in a single service operation. The network is multiclass in that several job classes may be processed at a server. Jobs in different classes cannot be mixed...

Dynamic airline revenue management with multiple semi-Markov demand.
January 1, 2003... When a customer requests a discount fare, the airline must decide whether to sell the seat at the requested discount or to hold the seat in hope that a customer will arrive later who will pay more. We model this situation for a single-leg...

Continuity of dea efficiency measures.
January 1, 2003... Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a methodology that allows, in one way or other, the assignment of efficiency scores to members of a group of decision-making units. We call an efficiency measure "continuous" if small perturbations of the...

Optimal lot-sizing/vehicle-dispatching policies under stochastic lead times and stepwise fixed costs.
January 1, 2003... We characterize optimal policies of a dynamic lot-sizing/vehicle-dispatching problem under dynamic deterministic demands and stochastic lead times. An essential feature of the problem is the structure of the ordering cost, where a fixed cost is...

A stochastic integer program with dual network structure and its application to the ground-holding problem. (Technical Note).
January 1, 2003... In this paper, we analyze a generalization of a classic network-flow model. The generalization involves the replacement of deterministic demand with stochastic demand. While this generalization destroys the original network structure, we show...