An evaluation of incentive contracting experience

Incentive contracts are intended to motivate defense contractors to perform more efficiently and control costs more closely. By increasing the total profit as actual costs are reduced below a predetermined cost target, they encourage contractors to achieve cost under runs. Consequently, the principal advantage claimed for these contracts is that they make the financial incentives to reduce costs more effective. This study examines the effectiveness of incentive contracts as a means for controlling defense procurement costs. The study considers the various effects that incentive contracts may have on both contractors' performance and contract costs, and presents empirical evidence suggesting that these contracts may not have accomplished their intended goal of increased efficiency and lower procurement costs.     

Approximation methods for the analysis of a multicomponent,multiproduct assemble‐to‐order system

In this article, we consider the performance evaluation of a multicomponent, multiproduct assemble‐to‐order (ATO) system. Each component is managed independently using a base‐stock policy at a supply facility with limited production capacity and an infinite buffer. The arrivals of demands follow a multivariate Poisson process and unfilled demands are backlogged. Because exact analysis of the proposed system is not feasible, we propose two approximation methods which provide upper and lower bounds for various performance measures such as fill rate, average waiting time, and average number of backorders of the proposed system. Our computational experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the two approximation methods under various system settings. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Planning accelerated life tests for censored two‐parameter exponential distributions

We consider optimal test plans involving life distributions with failure‐free life, i.e., where there is an unknown threshold parameter below which no failure will occur. These distributions do not satisfy the regularity conditions and thus the usual approach of using the Fisher information matrix to obtain an optimal accelerated life testing (ALT) plan cannot be applied. In this paper, we assume that lifetime follows a two‐parameter exponential distribution and the stress‐life relationship is given by the inverse power law model. Near‐optimal test plans for constant‐stress ALT under both failure‐censoring and time‐censoring are obtained. We first obtain unbiased estimates for the parameters and give the approximate variance of these estimates for both failure‐censored and time‐censored data. Using these results, the variance for the approximate unbiased estimate of a percentile at a design stress is computed and then minimized to produce the near‐optimal plan. Finally, a numerical example is presented together with simulation results to study the accuracy of the approximate variance given by the proposed plan and show that it outperforms the equal‐allocation plan. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 46: 169–186, 1999     

Bayesian inference of survival curve from record-breaking observations: Estimation and asymptotic results

In a variety of industrial situations experimental outcomes are only record-breaking observations. The data available may be represented as X₁, K_1., X₂, K₂,…, where X₁, X₂,… are the successive minima and K₁, K₂, … are the number of trials needed to obtain new records. Samaniego and Whitaker [11, 12] discussed the problem of estimating the survival function in both parametric and nonparametric setups when the data consisted of record-breaking observations. In this article we derive nonparametric Bayes and empirical Bayes estimators of the survival function for such data under a Dirichlet process prior and squared error loss. Furthermore, under the assumptions that the process of observing random records can be replicated, the weak convergence of the Bayes estimator is studied as the number of replications grows large. The calculations involved are illustrated by adopting Proschan's [9] data on successive failure times of air conditioning units on Boeing aircraft, for our purpose. The nonparametric maximum likelihood estimators of the survival function for different choices of the prior are displayed for comparison purposes.     

Local search techniques for the generalized resource constrained project scheduling problem

In this article we address the problem of scheduling a single project network with both precedence and resource constraints through the use of a local search technique. We choose a solution definition which guarantees precedence feasibility, allowing the procedure to focus on overcoming resource infeasibility. We use the 110-problem data set of Patterson to test our procedure. Our results indicate a significant improvement over the best heuristic results reported to date for these problems (Bell and Han [1]). Two major advantages of the local search algorithm are its ability to handle arbitrary objective functions and constraints and its effectiveness over a wide range of problem sizes. We present a problem example with an objective function and resource constraints which include nonlinear and non-continuous components, which are easily considered by the procedure. The results of our algorithm are significantly better than random solutions to the problem. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A bivariate pareto model and its applications to reliability

We consider a bivariate Pareto distribution, as a generalization of the Lindley-Singpurwalla model, by incorporating the influence of the operating conditions on a two-component dependent system. The properties of the model and its applications to reliability analysis are discussed. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.