Operations Research articles from November 2002

Operations Research archives from November 2002

Cutting and reuse: an application from automobile component manufacturing. (OR Practice).
November 1, 2002... This paper presents a decision support tool for solving a cutting and reuse problem arising in a European plant devoted to the production of gear belts. In this production, rectangular pieces of rubberised nylon are cut using machines employing...

Common mistakes in making value trade-offs. (Articles).
November 1, 2002... Value trade-offs define how much must be gained in the achievement of one objective to compensate for a lesser achievement on a different objective. Value trade-offs that adequately express a decision maker's values are essential both for good...

Nature reserve site selection to maximize expected species covered.
November 1, 2002... We analyze the problem of maximizing the expected number of species in a nature reserve network, subject to a constraint on the number of sites in the network, given probabilistic information about species occurrences. The problem is a...

The probabilistic set-covering problem.
November 1, 2002... In a probabilistic set-covering problem the right-hand side is a random binary vector and the covering constraint has to be satisfied with some prescribed probability. We analyze the structure of the set of probabilistically efficient points of...

Algorithms for radio link frequency assignment: the calma project.
November 1, 2002... The radio link frequency assignment problem occurs when a network of radio links has to be established. Each link must be assigned an operating frequency from a given domain. The assignment has to satisfy certain restrictions so as to limit the...

D-optimal sequential experiments for generating a simulation-based cycle time-throughput curve.
November 1, 2002... A cycle time-throughput curve quantifies the relationship of average cycle time to throughput rates in a manufacturing system. Moreover, it indicates the asymptotic capacity of a system. Such a curve is used to characterize system performance...

Managing learning and turnover in employee staffing.
November 1, 2002... We study the employee staffing problem in a service organization that uses employee service capacity to meet random, nonstationary service requirements. The employees experience learning and turnover on the job, and we develop a Markov Decision...

Inventory cost rate functions with nonlinear shortage costs.
November 1, 2002... This article considers five cost-rate models for inventory control, each summarizing the expected holding and shortage costs per period as a function of the inventory position. All models have linear holding costs and shortage cost coefficients...

Finite-size facility placement in the presence of barriers to rectilinear travel.
November 1, 2002... We consider the placement (location and orientation) of a single finite-size (finite-area, arbitrary shape) facility in the plane under the assumption that all travel occurs according to the rectilinear (or Manhattan) metric in the presence of...

Brownian approximations of multiclass open-queueing networks.
November 1, 2002... We study a multiclass open-queueing network with a set of single-server stations that operate under a combination of FIFO (first-in-first-out) and priority service disciplines, and are subject to random breakdowns. Assuming that the primitive...

Linear facility location in three dimensions--models and solution methods.
November 1, 2002... We consider the problem of locating a line or a line segment in three-dimensional space, such that the sum of distances from the facility represented by the line (segment) to a given set of points is minimized. An example is planning the...

On the effectiveness of zero-inventory-ordering policies for the economic lot-sizing model with a class of piecewise linear cost structures.
November 1, 2002... We consider an economic lot-sizing problem with a special class of piecewise linear ordering costs, which we refer to as the class of modified all-unit discount cost functions. Such an ordering cost function represents transportation costs...

When uncertainty is beneficial: interesting implications for the hydrocarbon discovery process. (Technical Notes).
November 1, 2002... Consider a basin with remaining undiscovered fields, in which both field sizes and their number are uncertain. Assuming that the probability of finding a field is increasing in its size, we show that the expected size of the first remaining...

An object-oriented random-number package with many long streams and substreams.
November 1, 2002... Multiple independent streams of random numbers are often required in simulation studies, for instance, to facilitate synchronization for variance-reduction purposes, and for making independent replications. A portable set of software utilities...