Managing components for assemble‐to‐order products with lead‐time‐dependent pricing: The full‐shipment model

We study a component inventory planning problem in an assemble‐to‐order environment faced by many contract manufacturers in which both quick delivery and efficient management of component inventory are crucial for the manufacturers to achieve profitability in a highly competitive market. Extending a recent study in a similar problem setting by the same authors, we analyze an optimization model for determining the optimal component stocking decision for a contract manufacturer facing an uncertain future demand, where product price depends on the delivery times. In contrast to our earlier work, this paper considers the situation where the contract manufacturer needs to deliver the full order quantity in one single shipment. This delivery requirement is appropriate for many industries, such as the garment and toy industries, where the economies of scale in transportation is essential. We develop efficient solution procedures for solving this optimization problem. We use our model results to illustrate how the different model parameters affect the optimal solution. We also compare the results under this full‐shipment model with those from our earlier work that allows for multiple partial shipments. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

The politics of multinational military operations

Today, few countries fight alone; most fight as allies or partners in multilateral campaigns. The end of the Cold War opened a window of opportunity for multinational military operations (MMOs). These have seen varying degrees of participation, enthusiasm, and success. This special forum is devoted to the politics of multilateral warfare including their formation, maintenance, and durability. The introduction sketches past research and derives some key questions of continuing relevance. The contributions shed light on the domestic and international politics of MMOs, focusing on the implementation of national restrictions and their repercussions for MMOs, party politics of military intervention, the conditions under which states decide to defect from military operations, and the role of junior partners in MMOs. In sum, this forum offers a fresh look at the politics of MMOs, including conceptual contributions to the study of national restrictions, domestic constraints, and coalition warfare.     

Approximation algorithms for minimizing total weighted completion time of orders on identical machines in parallel

We consider the problem of scheduling orders on identical machines in parallel. Each order consists of one or more individual jobs. A job that belongs to an order can be processed by any one of the machines. Multiple machines can process the jobs of an order concurrently. No setup is required if a machine switches over from one job to another. Each order is released at time zero and has a positive weight. Preemptions are not allowed. The completion time of an order is the time at which all jobs of that order have been completed. The objective is to minimize the total weighted completion time of the orders. The problem is NP‐hard for any fixed number (≥2) of machines. Because of this, we focus our attention on two classes of heuristics, which we refer to as sequential two‐phase heuristics and dynamic two‐phase heuristics. We perform a worst case analysis as well as an empirical analysis of nine heuristics. Our analyses enable us to rank these heuristics according to their effectiveness, taking solution quality as well as running time into account. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006     

A facility reliability problem: Formulation,properties, and algorithm

Having a robustly designed supply chain network is one of the most effective ways to hedge against network disruptions because contingency plans in the event of a disruption are often significantly limited. In this article, we study the facility reliability problem: how to design a reliable supply chain network in the presence of random facility disruptions with the option of hardening selected facilities. We consider a facility location problem incorporating two types of facilities, one that is unreliable and another that is reliable (which is not subject to disruption, but is more expensive). We formulate this as a mixed integer programming model and develop a Lagrangian Relaxation‐based solution algorithm. We derive structural properties of the problem and show that for some values of the disruption probability, the problem reduces to the classical uncapacitated fixed charge location problem. In addition, we show that the proposed solution algorithm is not only capable of solving large‐scale problems, but is also computationally effective. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

A markov chain version of the secretary problem

This paper deals with the Secretary Problem where n secretaries are interviewed sequentially and the best k must be hired. The values of the secretaries are observed as they are interviewed, but beforehand only the distributions of these values are known. Furthermore, the distributions of two successive secretaries' values are governed by a Markov chain. Optimal hiring policies for finite n and limiting optimal policies as k and n approach infinity are obtained.     

Exact algorithms for scheduling multiple families of jobs on parallel machines

In many practical manufacturing environments, jobs to be processed can be divided into different families such that a setup is required whenever there is a switch from processing a job of one family to another job of a different family. The time for setup could be sequence independent or sequence dependent. We consider two particular scheduling problems relevant to such situations. In both problems, we are given a set of jobs to be processed on a set of identical parallel machines. The objective of the first problem is to minimize total weighted completion time of jobs, and that of the second problem is to minimize weighted number of tardy jobs. We propose column generation based branch and bound exact solution algorithms for the problems. Computational experiments show that the algorithms are capable of solving both problems of medium size to optimality within reasonable computational time. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 50: 823–840, 2003.     

Optimal machine capacity expansions with nested limitations under stochastic demand

This paper studies capacity expansions for a production facility that faces uncertain customer demand for a single product family. The capacity of the facility is modeled in three tiers, as follows. The first tier consists of a set of upper bounds on production that correspond to different resource types (e.g., machine types, categories of manpower, etc.). These upper bounds are augmented in increments of fixed size (e.g., by purchasing machines of standard types). There is a second‐tier resource that constrains the first‐tier bounds (e.g., clean room floor space). The third‐tier resource bounds the availability of the second‐tier resource (e.g., the total floor space enclosed by the building, land, etc.). The second and third‐tier resources are expanded at various times in various amounts. The cost of capacity expansion at each tier has both fixed and proportional elements. The lost sales cost is used as a measure for the level of customer service. The paper presents a polynomial time algorithm (FIFEX) to minimize the total cost by computing optimal expansion times and amounts for all three types of capacity jointly. It accommodates positive lead times for each type. Demand is assumed to be nondecreasing in a “weak” sense. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.     

Maximizing project cash availability

Consider a project during the life cycle of which there are cash payouts and in‐flows. To better meet his financial commitments, the project owner would like to meet all deadlines without running out of cash. We show that the cash availability objective is similar to the total weighted flowtime used to measure work‐in‐progress performance in the scheduling and inventory control literatures. In this article we provide several specialized solution methods for the problem of minimizing total weighted flowtime in an arbitrary acyclic project network, subject to activity release times and due dates, where the activity weights may be positive or negative and represent cash in‐ and out‐flows. We describe the structure of an optimal solution and provide several efficient algorithms and their complexity based on mincost and maxflow formulations. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006     

A dual criteria sequencing problem with earliness and tardiness penalties

We consider the problem of sequencing n jobs on a single machine, with each job having a processing time and a common due date. The common due date is assumed to be so large that all jobs can complete by the due date. It is known that there is an O(n log n)‐time algorithm for finding a schedule with minimum total earliness and tardiness. In this article, we consider finding a schedule with dual criteria. The primary goal is to minimize the total earliness and tardiness. The secondary goals are to minimize: (1) the maximum earliness and tardiness; (2) the sum of the maximum of the squares of earliness and tardiness; (3) the sum of the squares of earliness and tardiness. For the first two criteria, we show that the problems are NP‐hard and we give a fully polynomial time approximation scheme for both of them. For the last two criteria, we show that the ratio of the worst schedule versus the best schedule is no more than . © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 422–431, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10020