Operations Research articles from July 2004

Operations Research archives from July 2004

A price-directed approach to stochastic inventory/routing.
July 1, 2004... We consider a new approach to stochastic inventory/routing that approximates the future costs of current actions using optimal dual prices of a linear program. We obtain two such linear programs by formulating the control problem as a Markov...

The Optimal Diversity Management Problem.
July 1, 2004... In some industries, a certain part can be needed in a very large number of different configurations. This is the case, e.g., for the electrical wirings in European car factories. A given configuration can be replaced by a more complete,...

Contact centers with a call-back option and real-time delay information.(Operations Research)
July 1, 2004... Motivated by practices in customer contact centers, we consider a system that offers two modes of service: real-time and postponed with a delay guarantee. Customers are informed of anticipated delays and select their preferred option of...

Valuation and optimal operation of electric power plants in competitive markets.
July 1, 2004... We present an algorithm for the valuation and optimal operation of hydroelectric and thermal power generators in deregulated electricity markets. Real options theory is used to derive nonlinear partial-integro-differential equations (PIDEs) for...

A numerical method for solving singular stochastic control problems.
July 1, 2004... Singular stochastic control has found diverse applications in operations management, economics, and finance. However, in all but the simplest of cases, singular stochastic control problems cannot be solved analytically. In this paper, we...

A multicommodity flow approach to the crew rostering problem.
July 1, 2004... The problem of finding a work assignment for airline crew members in a given time horizon is addressed. In the literature this problem is usually referred to as the airline crew rostering problem. It consists of constructing monthly schedules...

An ambush game with an unknown number of infiltrators.
July 1, 2004... We consider problems in which a defender is attempting to protect a channel from infiltration by laying static underwater devices across the channel. These devices can detect infiltrators that come within a given distance of them, and it is...

Concurrent crashing and overlapping in product development.
July 1, 2004... This research addresses two common tools for reducing product development lead times: overlapping of development stages and crashing of development times. For the first time in the product development literature, a formal model addresses both...

The co-printing problem: a packing problem with a color constraint.
July 1, 2004... The co-printing problem is a new variant of the bin-packing problem. It finds its origin in the printing of Tetra-bricks in the beverage industry. Combining different types of bricks in one printing pattern reduces the stock. With each brick, a...

Dynamic lot sizing with batch ordering and truckload discounts.
July 1, 2004... This paper studies two important variants of the dynamic economic lot-sizing problem that are applicable to a wide range of real-world situations. In the first model, production in each time period is restricted to a multiple of a constant...

A new placement heuristic for the orthogonal stock-cutting problem.
July 1, 2004... This paper presents a new best-fit heuristic for the two-dimensional rectangular stock-cutting problem and demonstrates its effectiveness by comparing it against other published approaches. A placement algorithm usually takes a list of shapes,...