Operations Research articles from May 2004

Operations Research archives from May 2004

In this issue.
May 1, 2004... Sequencing On-Air Commercials in Broadcast Television Shows Television networks sell advertising slots to their clients in sales contracts that span the broadcast year. The contracts specify the shows and airdates where the commercials air...

Scheduling commercials on broadcast television.(OR Practice)
May 1, 2004... Television networks sell advertising slots to clients by the shows on which the commercials air. The networks determine the exact location in the show that a commercial will air at a later stage, usually close to the airdate of the show. There...

Optimal auctioning and ordering in an infinite horizon inventory-pricing system.
May 1, 2004... We consider a joint inventory-pricing problem in which buyers act strategically and bid for units of a firm's product over an infinite horizon. The number of bidders in each period as well as the individual bidders' valuations are random but...

Nonconvex structures in nonlinear programming.
May 1, 2004... Nonsmoothness and nonconvexity in optimization problems often arise because a combinatorial structure is imposed on smooth or convex data. The combinatorial aspect can be explicit, e.g., through the use of "max," "min," or "if" statements in a...

Modifying variability and correlations in winner-take-all contests.
May 1, 2004... We consider contests with a fixed proportion of winners based on relative performance. Special attention is paid to winner-take-all contests, which we define as contests with relatively few winners receiving relatively large awards, but we...

Warehouse-retailer network design problem.
May 1, 2004... In this paper, we study the distribution network design problem integrating transportation and infinite horizon multiechelon inventory cost function. We consider the trade-off between inventory cost, direct shipment cost, and facility location...

The infinite horizon periodic review problem with setup costs and capacity constraints: a partial characterization of the optimal policy.
May 1, 2004... The one-item, periodic review production and inventory system has been extensively studied in literature. Theories have been established for various basic constructs of the system of either finite or infinite horizon, except for the case where...

An exact method for the car pooling problem based on Lagrangean column generation.
May 1, 2004... Car pooling is a transportation service organized by a large company which encourages its employees to pick up colleagues while driving to/from work to minimize the number of private cars travelling to/from the company site. The car pooling...

Rescheduling for new orders.
May 1, 2004... This paper considers scheduling problems where a set of original jobs has already been scheduled to minimize some cost objective, when a new set of jobs arrives and creates a disruption. The decision maker needs to insert the new jobs into the...

Shoot-look-shoot: a review and extension.
May 1, 2004... We consider the optimal use of information in shooting at a collection of targets, generally with the object of maximizing the average number (or value) of targets killed. The shooting problem is viewed as a Markov decision process, and the...

On the coordinated random group replacement policy in multivariate repairable systems.
May 1, 2004... We study a system with multiple components and preventive maintenance. At predetermined times, some of the components are replaced with new ones. We permit the set of components that are chosen for replacement to be random and study the effect...

Monotone forecasts.
May 1, 2004... In this paper we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the distribution of demand in the future to be stochastically increasing in the demand that has been observed in the past. We base our analysis on the multiperiod inventory model...

Sequence independent lifting for mixed-integer programming.(Technical Note)
May 1, 2004... We show that superadditive lifting functions lead to sequence independent lifting of inequalities for general mixed-integer programming. As an application, we note that mixed-integer rounding (MIR) may be viewed as sequence independent lifting....

Inventory control in directed networks: a note on linear costs.(Technical Note)
May 1, 2004... We consider periodic review inventory control problems in directed networks, primary examples of which are distribution systems and assembly systems. External demand could occur at each node. When inventory is insufficient to meet requirements...

Bank Hapoalim: "Opti-Money at Bank Hapoalim: A Model-Based Investment Decision Support System for Individual Customers.".(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Bank Hapoalim: "Opti-Money at Bank Hapoalim: A Model-Based Investment Decision Support System for Individual Customers." Bank Hapoalim: Mordecai Avriel, Hanna Pri-Zan, Ronit Meiri, and Avi Peretz. In 1995 Bank Hapoalim, Israel's...

Canadian Pacific Railway: "Perfecting the Scheduled Railrodad: Model-Driven Operating Plan Development.".(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Canadian Pacific Railway: "Perfecting the Scheduled Railrodad: Model-Driven Operating Plan Development." Canadian Pacific Railway: Phil Ireland, Rod Case, John Fallis; MultiModal Applied Systems, Inc.: Carl Van Dyke, Jason Kuehn, Marc...

Hewlett-Packard: "Accelerating the Profitability of Hewlett-Packard's Supply Chains.".(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Hewlett-Packard: "Accelerating the Profitability of Hewlett-Packard's Supply Chains." Hewlett-Packard: Corey Billington, Gianpaolo Callioni, Barrett Crane, Julie Unruh-Rapp, Trace White; Optiant: John Ruark; Boston University: Sean P....

Menlo Worldwide Forwarding: "Network Routing Optimization for Menlo Worldwide Forwarding.".(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Menlo Worldwide Forwarding: "Network Routing Optimization for Menlo Worldwide Forwarding." Menlo Worldwide Forwarding: Robert C. Prior, Rob L. Slavens, Gerard Trimarco: Menlo Worldwide Technologies: Vedat Akgun, Edward G. Feitzinger,...

Texas Children's Hospital: "Contract Optimization at Texas Children's Hospital.".(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Texas Children's Hospital: "Contract Optimization at Texas Children's Hospital." Texas Children's Hospital: Chris Born, Monica Carbaial, Pat Smith, Mark Wallace; PROS Revenue Management: Kirk Abbott, Surain Adyanthaya, E. Andrew Boyd,...

UPS: "Planning the UPS Air Network.".(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... UPS: "Planning the UPS Air Network." UPS Air Group: Keith A. Ware, Alysia M. Wilson; United States Air Force Academy: Andrew P. Armacost; Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Cynthia Barnhart. Known methods for solving large-scale...