Numerical simulation of warhead transportation

The new numerical approach for analysis of the warhead transportations is suggested.This approach allows to control the warhead operability before its experimental analysis.The approach is implemented by the adequate models for the software ANSYS.Analysis of the loads at land operations and trans-portations of the warhead by natural roads,water and aviation allows to obtain the maximal values of loads,which are used in numerical simulations of the warhead.These loads give an opportunity to analyze the operability and the fatigue strength of the cartridge warhead.The numerical simulations of the attachments of the warhead combat elements are performed on the basis of the suggested method.The data of the numerical simulations verifies the operability of the fastener system of the warhead combat elements.     

Predicting intensive care unit bed occupancy for integrated operating room scheduling via neural networks

In a master surgery scheduling (MSS) problem, a hospital's operating room (OR) capacity is assigned to different medical specialties. This task is critical since the risk of assigning too much or too little OR time to a specialty is associated with overtime or deficit hours of the staff, deferral or delay of surgeries, and unsatisfied—or even endangered—patients. Most MSS approaches in the literature focus only on the OR while neglecting the impact on downstream units or reflect a simplified version of the real‐world situation. We present the first prediction model for the integrated OR scheduling problem based on machine learning. Our three‐step approach focuses on the intensive care unit (ICU) and reflects elective and urgent patients, inpatients and outpatients, and all possible paths through the hospital. We provide an empirical evaluation of our method with surgery data for Universitätsklinikum Augsburg, a German tertiary care hospital with 1700 beds. We show that our model outperforms a state‐of‐the‐art model by 43% in number of predicted beds. Our model can be used as supporting tool for hospital managers or incorporated in an optimization model. Eventually, we provide guidance to support hospital managers in scheduling surgeries more efficiently.     

Determining newspaper marketing zones using contiguous clustering

We develop a heuristic procedure for partitioning graphs into clusters of nodes such that each cluster of nodes induces a connected subgraph with the objective of minimizing the differences within clusters as measured by the total differences between all pairs of nodes of a cluster. We apply our procedure to determine optimal delivery zones for community sections of a major newspaper while including a number of operational constraints. Our results demonstrate a 18–56% improvement in the total differences within the zones designed over the usual intuitive heuristics. Given the magnitude of the revenue generated by larger local newspapers through zoning, our method demonstrates how better zoning can significantly enhance the value of segmentation. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005.     

Modeling and analyzing multiple station baggage screening security system performance

In the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001, numerous changes have been made to aviation security policy and operations throughout the nation's airports. The allocation and utilization of checked baggage screening devices is a critical component in aviation security systems. This paper formulates problems that model multiple sets of flights originating from multiple stations (e.g., airports, terminals), where the objective is to optimize a baggage screening performance measure subject to a finite amount of resources. These measures include uncovered flight segments (UFS) and uncovered passenger segments (UPS). Three types of multiple station security problems are identified and their computational complexity is established. The problems are illustrated on two examples that use data extracted from the Official Airline Guide. The examples indicate that the problems can provide widely varying solutions based on the type of performance measure used and the restrictions imposed by the security device allocations. Moreover, the examples suggest that the allocations based on the UFS measure also provide reasonable solutions with respect to the UPS measure; however, the reverse may not be the case. This suggests that the UFS measure may provide more robust screening device allocations. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005.     

Cultural Conflict within Civil-Military Cooperation: A Case Study in Bosnia

In peace-support operations, employees of international humanitarian organisations often clash with those of the military. A lack of familiarity with each other's practices and values, embedded in their respective organisational cultures, is often seen as the culprit. This article presents and illustrates a road map to manage such cultural differences between cooperating organisations. We found that the military culture, in our Bosnian case study, was seen to operate as a hierarchical culture (characterised by formalisation, stability, predictability and efficiency). The culture of international humanitarian organisations, on the other hand, was depicted as clan-type (characterised by teamwork, participation and consensus). To facilitate the creation of cultural awareness as well as respect for, and reconciliation of, cultural differences we recommend several concrete actions that could improve civil-military cooperation.     

End effects in capacity expansion models with finite horizons

Capacity expansion models are typically formulated in the context of some finite horizon. Because the firm lasts longer than the horizon, a bias can enter into the optimal solution from the model horizon chosen. Recently, Grinold [8] has proposed a “dual-equilibrium method” for ameliorating possible distortions. Although the dual-equilibrium method has superior analytical properties to other methods, it is conceptually more complex. In this paper it is shown that there are situations where the “primal-equilibrium” approach of Manne [15] provides equivalent results and that the use of annualized capital costs in the objective function, although somewhat less efficient, results in a similar model.     

The procurement problem: An integer programming problem well suited to a solution using duality

A procurement problem, as formulated by Murty [10], is that of determining how many pieces of equipment units of each of m types are to be purchased and how this equipment is to be distributed among n stations so as to maximize profit, subject to a budget constraint. We have considered a generalization of Murty's procurement problem and developed an approach using duality to exploit the special structure of this problem. By using our dual approach on Murty's original problem, we have been able to solve large problems (1840 integer variables) with very modest computational effort. The main feature of our approach is the idea of using the current evaluation of the dual problem to produce a good feasible solution to the primal problem. In turn, the availability of good feasible solutions to the primal makes it possible to use a very simple subgradient algorithm to solve the dual effectively.