Tipping the scales: short-term interventions and counterinsurgency

Particularly in African operations, United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces have faced significant problems in restoring stability. In at least a few situations, unilateral national military interventions have been launched in the same countries. In the cases of Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, the British and French interventions respectively played a significant role in re-establishing stability. Lessons from these operations suggest that if effective coordination and liaison channels are established, such hybrid unilateral-UN missions can in fact be more successful than “pure” peace operations.     

Threshold incentives over multiple periods and the sales hockey stick phenomenon

In this article, we study threshold‐based sales‐force incentives and their impact on a dealer's optimal effort. A phenomenon, observed in practice, is that the dealer exerts a large effort toward the end of the incentive period to boost sales and reach the threshold to make additional profits. In the literature, the resulting last‐period sales spike is sometimes called the hockey stick phenomenon (HSP). In this article, we show that the manufacturer's choice of the incentive parameters and the underlying demand uncertainty affect the dealer's optimal effort choice. This results in the sales HSP over multiple time periods even when there is a cost associated with waiting. We then show that, by linking the threshold to a correlated market signal, the HSP can be regulated. We also characterize the variance of the total sales across all the periods and demonstrate conditions under the sales variance can be reduced. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

Location of facilities with rectangular distances among point and area destinations

This article is concerned with the optimal location of any number (n) of facilities in relation to any number (m) of destinations on the Euclidean plane. The criterion to be satisfied is the minimization of total weighted distances where the distances are rectangular. The destinations may be either single points, lines or rectangular areas. A gradient reduction solution procedure is described which has the property that the direction of descent is determined by the geometrical properties of the problem.     

A unified model for demand prediction in the context of provisining and replenishment

An improved demand prediction model is presented which incorporates features of two earlier models. The unified model pools usage data classified by repair part class and by component class. The performance of the model is evaluated in a provisioning and replenishment context and compared with that for the current procedure which employs technicians' usage estimates.     

Stochastic duels involving reliability

The reliability of weapons in combat has been treated by Bhashyam in the context of a stochastic duel characterized by fixed ammunition supplies. negative exponentially distributed firing times and weapon lifetimes, and a fixed number of spare weapons for each duelist. The present paper takes a different approach by starting with the fundamental duel of Ancker and Williams, characterized by unlimited ammunition and by ordinary renewal firing times, and adding to it weapon lifetimes which can be functions of time or of round position in the firing sequence. Probabilities of winning and tieing are derived and it is shown that under certain conditions the weapon lifetimes are equivalent to random time and ammunition limits.     

An operator theory of parametric programming for the transportation problem-I

This paper investigates the effect on the optimum solution of a (capacitated) transportation problem when the data of the problem (the rim conditions-i. e., the warehouse supplies and market demands-the per unit transportation costs and the upper bounds) are continuously varied as a (linear) function of a single parameter. An operator theory is developed and algorithms provided for applying rim and cost operators that effect the transformation of optimum solution associated with changes in rim conditions and unit costs. Bound operators that effect changes in upper bounds are shown to be equivalent to rim operators. The discussion in this paper is limited to basis preserving operators for which the changes in the data are such that the optimum basis structures are preserved.     

An economic model for planning strategic mobility posture

This paper describes a linear programming model used to perform cost-effectiveness analysis to determine the requirements for military strategic mobility resources. Expenditures for three classes of economic alternatives are considered: purchase of transportation resources; prepositioning of material; and augmentation of port facilities. The mix of economic alternatives that maximizes the effectiveness of the resultant transportation system is determined for a given investment level. By repeating the analysis for several levels of investment, a cost-effectiveness tradeoff curve can be developed.     

A note on a paper by houston and huffman

This paper calls attention to an experimental design which enhances the efficiency of the technique described by B. F. Houston and R. A. Huffman [3]. This alternative design is a modification of the simplex lattice design developed by Scheffé [6] for the mixture problem. While not possessing the optimal statistical properties of the central composite design proposed in [3], such as minimum bias and minimum variance, this modified design is optimum with respect to the number of design points employed; hence, it is the minimum cost design. Further, the design proposed in this note is excellent for use in multiple-block experimentation, which is very often required with constrained systems.     

Determining optimal growth paths in logistics operations

This paper considers a logistics system modelled as a transportation problem with a linear cost structure and lower bounds on supply from each origin and to each destination. We provide an algorithm for obtaining the growth path of such a system, i. e., determining the optimum shipment patterns and supply levels from origins and to destinations, when the total volume handled in the system is increased. Extensions of the procedure for the case when the costs of supplying are convex and piecewise linear and for solving transportation problems that are not in “standard form” are discussed. A procedure is provided for determining optimal plant capacities when the market requirements have prespecified growth rates. A goal programming growth model where the minimum requirements are treated as goals rather than as absolute requirements is also formulated.     

An optimum t-test for the scale parameter of an extreme-value distribution

A Student's t-test proposed by Ogawa is considered for the hypothesis Ho: σ=σo against the alternative hypothesis H₁: σ ≠ σo, where σ is the scale parameter of the Extremevalue distribution of smallest values with known location parameter μ. The test is based on a few sample quantiles chosen from a large sample so as to give asymptotically maximum power to the test when the number of sample quantiles is fixed. A table which facilitates the computation of the test statistic is given. Several schemes for determining the ranks of the sample quantiles by the optimal spacings are compared and the effect of the bias of the estimate of σ on the test is investigated through a Monte Carlo study.