Operations Research articles from March 2003

Operations Research archives from March 2003

Flow management to optimize retail profits at theme parks. (Practice).
March 1, 2003... In many theme parks, stores are located within major attractions to sell related merchandise. Sales at such stores form a significant portion of theme park profits. Typically, store sales depend upon visitor flows through the attraction,...

Pricing options on scaler diffusions: and eigenfunction expansion approach. (Articles).
March 1, 2003... This paper develops an eigenfucntion expansion approach to pricing options on scalar diffusion processes. All contingent claims are unbundled into portfolios of primitive securities called eigensecuriries. Eigensecurities are eigenvectors...

A time-series framework for supply-chain inventory management.
March 1, 2003... We consider a supply chain in which the underlying demand process can be described in a linear state space form. Inventory is managed at various points of the chain (members), based on local information that each member observes and...

An oil pipeline design problem.
March 1, 2003... We consider a given set of offshore platforms and onshore wells producing known (or estimated) amounts of oil to be connected to a port. Connections may take place directly between platforms, well sites, and the port, or may go through...

Record matching in data warehouses: a decision model for data consolidation.
March 1, 2003... The notion of a data warehouse for integrating operational data into a single repository is rapidly becoming popular in modem organizations. An important issue in the integration process is how to deal with the identifier mismatch problem when...

A call-routing problem with service-level constraints.
March 1, 2003... We consider a queueing system, commonly found in inbound telephone call centers, that processes two types of work. Type-H jobs arrive at rate [[lambda].sub.H], are processed at rate [[micro].sub.H], and are served first come, first served...

Efficiency of time segmentation parallel simulation of finite Markovian queueing networks.
March 1, 2003... We present an approach for using parallel processors to simulate long sample paths of Markovian queueing networks with finite buffers and both loss and blocking stations. Parallelism is achieved by distributing the available processors among...

On the undirected rural postman problem: tight bounds based on a new formulation.
March 1, 2003... The Rural Postman Problem (RPP) is a classic "edge-routing" problem. A mathematical programming formulation fundamentally from those in the literature was introduced, but not tested computationally, by Garfinkel and Webb (1999). A rudimentary...

Order fill rate, leadtime variability, and advance demand information in an assemble-to-order system.
March 1, 2003... We study an assemble-to-order system with stochastic leadtimes for component replenishment. There are multiple product types, of which orders arrive at the system following batch Poisson processes. Base-stock policies are used to control...

Minimization of the number of tool magazine setups on automated machines: a Lagrangean decomposition approach.
March 1, 2003... This paper addresses the parts-grouping problem that arises in automated manufacturing environments where appropriate cutting tools must be loaded on Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines to process a variety of parts. Since tool-loading...

Inventory models with fixed costs, forecast updates, and two delivery modes.
March 1, 2003... This paper is concerned with a periodic review inventory system with fast and slow delivery modes, fixed ordering cost, and regular demand forecast updates. At the beginning of each period, on-hand inventory and demand information are updated....

Centralized and competitive inventory models with demand substitution. (Technical Notes).
March 1, 2003... A standard problem in operations literature is optimal stocking of substitutable products. We consider a consumer-driven substitution problem with an arbitrary number of products under both centralized inventory management and competition....

Optimal EOQ for announced price increases in infinite horizon.
March 1, 2003... In this paper we consider an infinite horizon economic order quantity (EOQ) model with single announced price increase, with an option of placing a special order just before the price increase takes effect. We extend earlier work where it is...