Coordinated scheduling of customer orders for quick response

The scheduling problem addressed in this paper concerns a manufacturer who produces a variety of product types and operates in a make‐to‐order environment. Each customer order consists of known quantities of the different product types, and must be delivered as a single shipment. Periodically the manufacturer schedules the accumulated and unscheduled customer orders. Instances of this problem occur across industries in manufacturing as well as in service environments. In this paper we show that the problem of minimizing the weighted sum of customer order delivery times is unary NP‐hard. We characterize the optimal schedule, solve several special cases of the problem, derive tight lower bounds, and propose several heuristic solutions. We report the results of a set of computational experiments to evaluate the lower bounding procedures and the heuristics, and to determine optimal solutions. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005.     

Modeling the operation of multireservoir systems using decomposition and stochastic dynamic programming

Stochastic dynamic programming models are attractive for multireservoir control problems because they allow non‐linear features to be incorporated and changes in hydrological conditions to be modeled as Markov processes. However, with the exception of the simplest cases, these models are computationally intractable because of the high dimension of the state and action spaces involved. This paper proposes a new method of determining an operating policy for a multireservoir control problem that uses stochastic dynamic programming, but is practical for systems with many reservoirs. Decomposition is first used to reduce the problem to a number of independent subproblems. Each subproblem is formulated as a low‐dimensional stochastic dynamic program and solved to determine the operating policy for one of the reservoirs in the system. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006     

Learning and costs in airframe production: A multiple-output production function approach

This article examines the influence of both production rate and learning on airframe program costs. A dynamic multiple-output production model is developed and is used to observe the cost impact of changes in production rate and learning. Several simulations are performed to demonstrate the sensitivity of the optimal time path of cost to changes in the model parameters. The model is applied by estimating parameters from the F102 airframe program.     

The class of mifra lifetimes and its relation to other classes

In a previous paper, the authors have introduced a class of multivariate lifetimes (MIFRA) which generalize the univariate lifetimes with increasing failure rate average (IFRA). They have also shown that this class satisfies many fundamental properties. In this paper it is shown that other concepts of multivariate IFRA do not satisfy all of these properties. Relationships between MIFRA and these other concepts are given. Finally, positive dependence implications with respect to these classes are also discussed.     

Decision rules for attacking targets of opportunity

Frequently in warfare, a force is required to attack a perishable enemy target system - a target system where the targets are detected seemingly at random, and if not immediately attacked, will shortly escape from detection. A conflicting situation arises when an attack element detects a target of relatively low value and has to decide whether to expend his resources on that particular target or to wait for a more lucrative one, hoping one will be found. This paper provides a decision rule giving the least valued target that should be attacked as well as the resources that should be expended as a function of the attack element's remaining mission time.     

Hard Line: The Republican Party and US Foreign Policy since World War II Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment

This article examines the Dhofar campaign in Oman (1965–75), and the role Britain played in assisting the Omani royal government against left-wing insurgents. Using existing secondary sources and declassified British government papers, it reassesses the contribution of British military advisers and special forces to the counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign, the balance between military action and civil affairs, the external dimension of the conflict, and intelligence and covert operations. It concludes by assessing whether the Dhofar War offers any guidance to Western armed forces involved in contemporary COIN campaigns such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq.