Designing a screening experiment for highly reliable products

Within a reasonable life‐testing time, how to improve the reliability of highly reliable products is one of the great challenges to today's manufacturers. By using a resolution III experiment together with degradation test, Tseng, Hamada, and Chiao (1995) presented an interesting case study of improving the reliability of fluorescent lamps. However, in conducting such an experiment, they did not address the problem of how to choose the optimal settings of variables, such as sample size, inspection frequency, and termination time for each run, which are influential to the correct identification of significant factors and the experimental cost. Assuming that the product's degradation paths satisfy Wiener processes, this paper proposes a systematic approach to the aforementioned problem. First, an intuitively appealing identification rule is proposed. Next, under the constraints of a minimum probability of correct decision and a maximum probability of incorrect decision of the proposed identification rule, the optimum test plan (including the determinations of inspection frequency, sample size, and termination time for each run) can be obtained by minimizing the total experimental cost. An example is provided to illustrate the proposed method. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 514–526, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10024     

Minimizing weighted earliness and tardiness penalties in single‐machine scheduling with idle time permitted

In this paper, a single‐machine scheduling problem with weighted earliness and tardiness penalties is considered. Idle time between two adjacent jobs is permitted and due dates of jobs could be unequal. The dominance rules are utilized to develop a relationship matrix, which allows a branch‐and‐bound algorithm to eliminate a high percentage of infeasible solutions. After combining this matrix with a branching strategy, a procedure to solve the problem is proposed. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 760–780, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10039     

Retailer's rationale to refuse consumer returns in supply chains

While accepting consumer returns has long been proposed as a solution to resolve the consumer valuation uncertainty problem, there are still a sizable portion of retailers who insist on a “no return” policy. In this article, we offer an economic rationale for these seemingly unreasonable strategies in a supply chain context. We demonstrate when and why the retailer may benefit from refusing consumer returns, even though offering consumer returns allows the supply chain to implement the expostmarket segmentation. Granting the retailer the right to refuse consumer returns may sometimes improve supply chain efficiency: it eliminates the manufacturer's attempt to induce inefficient consumer returns and bring the equilibrium back to that in the vertically integrated benchmark. We also find that the refund and the retail price can move in the opposite directions when product reliability varies, and consumer returns have a nontrivial impact on the quality choice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 686–701, 2015     

平台姿态误差对TDICCD相机成像几何质量的影响

研究卫星平台姿态误差对TDICCD相机成像几何质量的影响有助于提出姿态指标设计要求以提高相机几何成像质量,以像点位移为中间参量,研究平台姿态误差和成像几何质量指标之间的定量关系。基于平台姿态误差引起的像移速度、偏流角和积分时间等成像参数误差分析,结合严密几何成像模型推导像点位移的误差模型,建立从像点位移量到相邻像元间角度畸变、长度畸变、像元分辨率和定位误差等几何质量指标的定量模型,构建从平台姿态误差到相机成像几何质量指标的完整定量分析链路。仿真实验结果表明,偏航角姿态误差是影响成像几何质量的主要因素。     

添加剂对多晶Al2O3透明陶瓷装甲性能的影响

通过试验对比等方法,分析了添加MgO和稀土氧化物Y₂O₃对多晶Al₂O₃透明陶瓷的微观结构（气孔率、晶粒大小和分布）、力学性能以及全透光率的影响。结果表明:当MgO质量分数为0.05%、Y₂O₃质量分数为0.02%时,样品的力学性能和光学性能最佳。研究可为制备透明陶瓷装甲材料提供理论支撑。     

瞄准式战斗部瞄准策略研究

对不同的瞄准点,瞄准式战斗部对目标毁伤效果不同,为此提出了适用于瞄准式战斗部的瞄准策略,保证了对目标较高的毁伤概率和较好的毁伤效果,解决了起爆之前战斗部的定位问题。     

Impact of reseller's and sales agent's forecasting accuracy in a multilayer supply chain

We consider a three‐layer supply chain with a manufacturer, a reseller, and a sales agent. The demand is stochastically determined by the random market condition and the sales agent's private effort level. Although the manufacturer is uninformed about the market condition, the reseller and the sales agent conduct demand forecasting and generate private demand signals. Under this framework with two levels of adverse selection intertwined with moral hazard, we study the impact of the reseller's and the sales agent's forecasting accuracy on the profitability of each member. We show that the manufacturer's profitability is convex on the reseller's forecasting accuracy. From the manufacturer's perspective, typically improving the reseller's accuracy is detrimental when the accuracy is low but is beneficial when it is high. We identify the concrete interrelation among the manufacturer‐optimal reseller's accuracy, the volatility of the market condition, and the sales agent's accuracy. Finally, the manufacturer's interest may be aligned with the reseller's when only the reseller can choose her accuracy; this alignment is never possible when both downstream players have the discretion to choose their accuracy. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 207–222, 2014     

Return policy: Hassle‐free or your money‐back guarantee?

This article compares the profitability of two pervasively adopted return policies—money‐back guarantee and hassle‐free policies. In our model, a seller sells to consumers with heterogeneous valuations and hassle costs. Products are subject to quality risk, and product misfit can only be observed post‐purchase. While the hassle‐free policy is cost advantageous from the seller's viewpoint, a money‐back guarantee allows the seller to fine‐tune the consumer hassle on returning the product. Thus, when the two return policies lead to the same consumer behaviors, the hassle‐free policy dominates. Conversely, a money‐back guarantee can be more profitable even if on average, high‐valuation consumers experience a lower hassle cost than the low‐valuation ones. The optimal hassle cost can be higher when product quality gets improved; thus, it is not necessarily a perfect proxy or signal of the seller's quality. We further allow the seller to adopt a mixture of these policies, and identify the concrete operating regimes within which these return policies are optimal among more flexible policies. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 403–417, 2014     

Strategic outsourcing under technology spillovers

We study a supply chain in which an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a contract manufacturer (CM) compete in the finished goods market. The OEM can decide whether to outsource the intermediate good, a critical component for producing the finished good, from the CM or make in‐house production. Technology transition improves the CM's production efficiency, and it can take two different forms: a direct technology transfer from the OEM to the CM or technology spillovers through outsourcing from the OEM to the CM. We document the possibility of strategic outsourcing, that is, the CM supplies the intermediate good to the OEM when she is less efficient than the OEM's in‐house production. We find that technology spillovers can strengthen the incentive for strategic outsourcing. Furthermore, compared with direct technology transfers, outsourcing coupled with technology spillovers may generate more technology transition. Outsourcing is a particularly appropriate channel for implicit collusion when the OEM is not very efficient with the production of the intermediate good. Our results suggest that ex post competition on the finished goods can create room for ex ante collaboration and provide some implications on the OEM's outsourcing strategies when facing a competitive CM.© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 501–514, 2014     

A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS OF THE NEXUS BETWEEN DEFENCE SPENDING AND GROWTH IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: A REPLY

Hatzinikolaou raises a number of issues related mainly to the econometrics of our paper. These issues are categorized according to the three stages of econometric analysis: specification, estimation, and diagnostic checking. We categorize our reply to his comments accordingly.