Optimal service‐capacity allocation in a loss system

We consider a loss system with a fixed budget for servers. The system owner's problem is choosing the price, and selecting the number and quality of the servers, in order to maximize profits, subject to a budget constraint. We solve the problem with identical and different service rates as well as with preemptive and nonpreemptive policies. In addition, when the policy is preemptive, we prove the following conservation law: the distribution of the total service time for a customer entering the slowest server is hyperexponential with expectation equal to the average service rate independent of the allocation of the capacity. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 81–97, 2015     

Effects of lethality in naval combat models

In the context of both discrete time salvo models and continuous time Lanchester models we examine the effect on naval combat of lethality: that is, the relative balance between the offensive and defensive attributes of the units involved. We define three distinct levels of lethality and describe the distinguishing features of combat for each level. We discuss the implications of these characteristics for naval decision‐makers; in particular, we show that the usefulness of the intuitive concept “more is better” varies greatly depending on the lethality level. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.     

Limiting survival functions of self‐similar structures

We show the existence of a unique analytic single parameter limiting survival function arising from the repeated composition of a coherent structure as the number of components tends to infinity. Examples include the repeated composition process of the bridge structure. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.     

A unified model incorporating yield,burn‐in,and reliability

The correlated improvement in yield and reliability has been observed in the case studies on integrated circuits and electronic assemblies. This paper presents a model that incorporates yield and reliability with the addition of a burn‐in step to explain their correlated improvement. The proposed model includes as special cases several yield and reliability models that have been previously published and thus provides a unifying framework. The model is used to derive a condition for which yield functions can be multiplied to obtain the overall yield. Yield and reliability are compared as a function of operation time, and an analytical condition for burn‐in to be effective is also obtained. Finally, Poisson and negative binomial defects models are further considered to investigate how reliability is based on yield. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.     

Index policies for the routing of background jobs

Arriving (generic) jobs may be processed at one of several service stations, but only when no other (dedicated) jobs are waiting there. We consider the problem of how to route these incoming background jobs to make best use of the spare service capacity available at the stations. We develop an approximative approach to Whittle's proposal for restless bandits to obtain an index policy for routing. The indices concerned are increasing and nonlinear in the station workload. A numerical study testifies to the strong performance of the index policies developed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004     

An adaptive forecasting algorithm and inventory policy for products with short life cycles

Products with short life cycles are becoming increasingly common in many industries, such as the personal computer (PC) and mobile phone industries. Traditional forecasting methods and inventory policies can be inappropriate for forecasting demand and managing inventory for a product with a short life cycle because they usually do not take into account the characteristics of the product life cycle. This can result in inaccurate forecasts, high inventory cost, and low service levels. Besides, many forecasting methods require a significant demand history, which is available only after the product has been sold for some time. In this paper, we present an adaptive forecasting algorithm with two characteristics. First, it uses structural knowledge on the product life cycle to model the demand. Second, it combines knowledge on the demand that is available prior to the launch of the product with actual demand data that become available after the introduction of the product to generate and update demand forecasts. Based on the forecasting algorithm, we develop an optimal inventory policy. Since the optimal inventory policy is computationally expensive, we propose three heuristics and show in a numerical study that one of the heuristics generates near‐optimal solutions. The evaluation of our approach is based on demand data from a leading PC manufacturer in the United States, where the forecasting algorithm has been implemented. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.     

Exact likelihood inference for the exponential distribution under generalized Type‐I and Type‐II hybrid censoring

Chen and Bhattacharyya [Exact confidence bounds for an exponential parameter under hybrid censoring, Commun Statist Theory Methods 17 (1988), 1857–1870] considered a hybrid censoring scheme and obtained the exact distribution of the maximum likelihood estimator of the mean of an exponential distribution along with an exact lower confidence bound. Childs et al. [Exact likelihood inference based on Type‐I and Type‐II hybrid censored samples from the exponential distribution, Ann Inst Statist Math 55 (2003), 319–330] recently derived an alternative simpler expression for the distribution of the MLE. These authors also proposed a new hybrid censoring scheme and derived similar results for the exponential model. In this paper, we propose two generalized hybrid censoring schemes which have some advantages over the hybrid censoring schemes already discussed in the literature. We then derive the exact distribution of the maximum likelihood estimator as well as exact confidence intervals for the mean of the exponential distribution under these generalized hybrid censoring schemes. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004     

On the uncapacitated K‐commodity network design problem with zero flow‐costs

Extending Sastry's result on the uncapacitated two‐commodity network design problem, we completely characterize the optimal solution of the uncapacitated K‐commodity network design problem with zero flow costs for the case when K = 3. By solving a set of shortest‐path problems on related graphs, we show that the optimal solutions can be found in O(n³) time when K = 3, where n is the number of nodes in the network. The algorithm depends on identifying a list of “basic patterns”; the number of basic patterns grows exponentially with K. We also show that the uncapacitated K‐commodity network design problem can be solved in O(n³) time for general K if K is fixed; otherwise, the time for solving the problem is exponential. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004     

Higher‐order Markov chain models for categorical data sequences*

In this paper we study higher‐order Markov chain models for analyzing categorical data sequences. We propose an efficient estimation method for the model parameters. Data sequences such as DNA and sales demand are used to illustrate the predicting power of our proposed models. In particular, we apply the developed higher‐order Markov chain model to the server logs data. The objective here is to model the users' behavior in accessing information and to predict their behavior in the future. Our tests are based on a realistic web log and our model shows an improvement in prediction. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004