Toward a multi-stage information conversion model of the research and development process

Research and development activities in a business firm or government laboratory are portrayed as a multi-stage information generation and conversion process. A “basic research” phase generates opportunities, in the form of findings in a set of scientific disciplines, which are available for subsequent exploitation. It is assumed that increments to information in a subject area are stochastic, proportional to the amount of knowledge which already exists in the area, and have values which are randomly distributed. An “exploratory development” phase is viewed as a process of selecting a subset of alternative research opportunities, improving each opportunity in the direction of its applications, estimating the value of the improved opportunity and using these estimates to choose the exploratory development results to be implemented in engineering development. The “engineering development” phase makes the value of exploratory results realizable without changing value or risk. Engineering development costs are assumed to increase as value increases. If exploratory development is not successful, additional costs in engineering development must be incurred to bring the design up to a minimum desirable level. The model is intended as a step toward formulating and analyzing problems in management planning and control of the several interrelated stages of the research and development process.     

Fitting Lanchester equations to the battles of Kursk and Ardennes

Lanchester equations and their extensions are widely used to calculate attrition in models of warfare. This paper examines how Lanchester models fit detailed daily data on the battles of Kursk and Ardennes. The data on Kursk, often called the greatest tank battle in history, was only recently made available. A new approach is used to find the optimal parameter values and gain an understanding of how well various parameter combinations explain the battles. It turns out that a variety of Lanchester models fit the data about as well. This explains why previous studies on Ardennes, using different minimization techniques and data formulations, have found disparate optimal fits. We also find that none of the basic Lanchester laws (i.e., square, linear, and logarithmic) fit the data particularly well or consistently perform better than the others. This means that it does not matter which of these laws you use, for with the right coefficients you will get about the same result. Furthermore, no constant attrition coefficient Lanchester law fits very well. The failure to find a good‐fitting Lanchester model suggests that it may be beneficial to look for new ways to model highly aggregated attrition. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.     

The (s,Q) inventory model with Erlang lead time and deterministic demand

We develop a simple, approximately optimal solution to a model with Erlang lead time and deterministic demand. The method is robust to misspecification of the lead time and has good accuracy. We compare our approximate solution to the optimal for the case where we have prior information on the lead‐time distribution, and another where we have no information, except for computer‐generated sample data. It turns out that our solution is as easy as the EOQ's, with an accuracy rate of 99.41% when prior information on the lead‐time distribution is available and 97.54–99.09% when only computer‐generated sample information is available. Apart from supplying the inventory practitioner with an easy heuristic, we gain insights into the efficacy of stochastic lead time models and how these could be used to find the cost and a near‐optimal policy for the general model, where both demand rate and lead time are stochastic. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004     

Quantifying optimal mesh and ring design costs

During the last decade telecommunication operators have been deploying WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology to satisfy the exponential growth in global communication. While facilitating the advanced information society of today, this has also led to a higher dependency on the networks, and furthermore the high capacity utilization of optical fibers means that a single link failure will influence many users and enterprises. For these reasons, protection of network connections has become a major competitive parameter for the operators. Currently, the most popular protection method is ring protection, due to its simplicity, requiring only basic management functionality and operating with local restoration control. While many optical rings have been deployed, little work has been published on exactly what the cost of ring networks are, compared to general mesh networks. In this article we perform a quantitative comparison between ring protection and mesh protection, using real world network data and realistic prices for network components. Extending classic LP flow models to take rings and node costs into account, and using a link‐path based mesh network LP model, we are able to perform a total cost comparison of the two architectures, and of manual ring network design. The results suggest that the price of mesh network components must be reduced significantly to be competitive with ring based networks, and also that manual network design does not necessarily lead to the most cost‐efficient designs. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005     

Britain and Hiroshima

Most historical accounts of the atomic bombings of Japan show little interest in Britain's explicit authorization for the attacks. Meanwhile, the few historians who have attempted to explain it rely on a unitary, rational actor model of the British state that is misleading. This article demonstrates that high-ranking British officials became anxious early on about the strategic consequences of a peremptory use of the new weapon. Therefore, especially over the course of 1944 they sought to engage Washington on the linked questions of the bomb's wartime use and its postwar control. However, these officials' initiatives were rebuffed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who paved the way to the bombings based on a fervent desire for Anglo-American integration, and on a dim understanding of the bomb's revolutionary potential.     

Analysing coalition warfare from an intra-alliance politics perspective: The Normandy Campaign 1944

This article sets forth a framework for analysis designed to enhance our understanding of the political management of coalition warfare. The framework, based upon literature appertaining to ‘intra-alliance politics’ and International Relations (IR) theories, is applied to the case study of the Normandy Campaign of 1944. Utilising this framework we are able to consider many of the thorny issues of coalition politics and determine how these can be managed successfully to maintain Allied cohesion. Throughout the analysis the merits of the ‘realist’ and ‘pluralist’ views on maintaining Allied cohesion are appraised. The article concludes that, while both afford convincing explanations for overcoming tensions within the coalition, the pluralist approach proves superior in accounting for Allied unity. Overall, the article demonstrates that the intra-alliance politics framework is a useful device for understanding the political dynamics of the Normandy Campaign in 1944 and that it is also potentially applicable to other instances of coalition warfare; past, present, and future.