Security,structural factors and sovereignty: Analysing reactions to Kenya’s decision to close the Dadaab refugee camp complex

Kenya’s decision to close the Dadaab refugee camp complex highlights structural flaws in the international refugee regime. While much attention has been paid to Kenya’s reasoning, less has been given to the reactions of organisations and states. Given the state’s primacy in the international system and uncertainty about refugees, Kenya’s decision is perhaps unsurprising. It is contended that the stakeholders were unprepared because of path dependence and disbelief that Kenya would repatriate the refugees. While stakeholder reactions arguably demonstrate concern for refugees, the international refugee regime remains unquestioned, sustaining revenue streams that may fuel corruption, encourage lengthy encampment and prolong conflict.     

Mirror,mirror on the wall,who is the most offensive of them all? – Explaining the offensive bias in military tactical thinking

This article explores why the offensive predominates military tactical thinking. With survey results showing an offensive bias among 60 per cent of senior Swedish officers and as many as 80 per cent in the case of the army, it is clear that this is not just a problem of the past but is equally relevant today. The article asks why there is a tendency to perceive and understand offensive tactics as the preferred choice and the way to conduct battle that should be encouraged and preferred. Drawing on existing research and the findings of a pilot study, ten propositions for why the offensive bias exists are tested using a mixed-method approach. Based on the findings, the article develops a model to understand why the offensive dominates military tactical thinking. It is found that the two key constitutive factors behind the offensive bias are military culture and education. These factors most directly and profoundly influence an officer’s identity, perceptions, and thinking. Military culture and education, in turn, work as a prism for four other factors: military history, the theory and principles of war, doctrine and TTPs, and psychological factors.     

Moving the techno-science gap in Security Force Assistance

This paper looks at the impact of military technology diffusion on military assistance operations (MAO), in the United States known as Security Force Assistance or SFA. The discussion looks conceptually at the role of technological change and how it interacts with martial cultures in military assistant operations. I argue that growing trends in science and technology suggest potential conflicts between culture and technology. Relying on a culture-technology model drawn from anthropology, the paper contends that new technologies will present increasing challenges for the emerging MAO landscape. The paper will illustrate that the techno-science gap will continue to grow as innovations such as robotics, sensors, and networks continue to develop. Finally, the paper will look at ways to overcome this conflict between culture and technology.     

Printed circuit board family grouping and component allocation for a multimachine,open-shop assembly cell

This article considers a particular printed circuit board (PCB) assembly system employing surface mount technology. Multiple, identical automatic placement machines, a variety of board types, and a large number of component types characterize the environment studied. The problem addressed is that of minimizing the makespan for assembling a batch of boards with a secondary objective of reducing the mean flow time. The approach adopted is that of grouping boards into production families, allocating component types to placement machines for each family, dividing of families into board groups with similar processing times, and the scheduling of groups. A complete setup is incurred only when changing over between board families. For the environment studied, precedence constraints on the order of component placement do not exist, and placement times are independent of feeder location. Heuristic solution procedures are proposed to create board subfamilies (groups) for which the component mounting times are nearly identical within a subfamily. Assignment of the same component type to multiple machines is avoided. The procedures use results from the theory of open-shop scheduling and parallel processor scheduling to sequence boards on machines. Note that we do not impose an open-shop environment but rather model the problem in the context of an open shop, because the order of component mountings is immaterial. Three procedures are proposed for allocating components to machines and subsequently scheduling boards on the machines. The first two procedures assign components to machines to balance total work load. For scheduling purposes, the first method groups boards into subfamilies to adhere to the assumptions of the open-shop model, and the second procedure assumes that each board is a subfamily and these are scheduled in order of shortest total processing time. The third procedure starts by forming board subfamilies based on total component similarity and then assigns components to validate the open-shop model. We compare the performance of the three procedures using estimated daily, two-day, and weekly production requirements by averaging quarterly production data for an actual cell consisting of five decoupled machines. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

On the set of (perfect) equilibria of a bimatrix game

This article provides a new approach to the set of (perfect) equilibria. With the help of an equivalence relation on the strategy space of each player. Nash sets and Selten sets are introduced. The number of these sets is finite and each of these sets is a polytope. As a consequence the set of (perfect) equilibria is a finite union of polytopes. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons. Inc.     

Minimax resource allocation problems with ordering constraints

Resource allocation problems consider the allocation of limited resources among numerous competing activities. We address an allocation problem with multiple knapsack resource constraints. The activities are grouped into disjoint sets. Ordering constraints are imposed on the activities within each set, so that the level of one activity cannot exceed the level of another activity in the same set. The objective function is of the minimax type and each performance function is a nonlinear, strictly decreasing and continuous function of a single variable. Applications for such resource allocation problems are found, for example, in high-tech industries confronted with large-scale and complex production planning problems. We present two algorithms to solve the allocation problem with ordering constraints. The first one uses characterization of the optimal decision variables to apply a search method. The second algorithm solves a sequence of problems, each in the format of the original problem without ordering constraints. Whereas the computational effort of the first algorithm depends on the desired degree of accuracy even for linear performance functions, the effort of the latter algorithm is polynomial for certain classes of performance functions. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Cost analysis and extension of a simple maintenance-scheduling heuristic

Practitioners of maintenance scheduling sometimes use a simple analytic formula, derived based on inspection scheduling, as a heuristic to determine the length of the preventive maintenance period. The sensitivity of this heuristic solution is analyzed and the cost penalties are calculated compared to the exact solution that utilizes the lifetime distribution in the derivation of the optimal preventive maintenance period. A simple extension of the heuristic is suggested to improve the approximation with a slightly increased computational effort. The sensitivity and cost analysis of the improved heuristic are discussed as well. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A parametric-based heuristic program for the quadratic assignment problem

In this article we study the quadratic assignment problem by embedding the actual data in a data space which satisfies an extension of the metric triangle property. This leads to simpler computations for the determination of heuristic solutions. Bounds are given for the loss of optimality which such heuristic solutions would involve in any specific instance. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Composite unimodality

This article defines a class of univariate functions termed composite unimodal, and shows how their minimization admits an effective search procedure, albeit one not as efficient as is Fibonacci search for unimodal functions. An approximate Lagrangian approach to an important real-world logistics problem is seen to yield a surrogate problem whose objective function is composite unimodal. The mathematical form of this objective function is likely to be encountered in solving future real-world problems. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Replacing nonidentical vital components to extend system life

We consider a system that depends on a single vital component. If this component fails, the system life will terminate. If the component is replaced before its failure then the system life may be extended; however, there are only a finite number of spare components. In addition, the lifetimes of these spare components are not necessarily identically distributed. We propose a model for scheduling component replacements so as to maximize the expected system survival. We find the counterintuitive result that when comparing components' general lifetime distributions based on stochastic orderings, not even the strongest ordering provides an a priori guarantee of the optimal sequencing of components. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008