A comparison of usage data among types of aircraft

It has long been an accepted proposition that base level usage df technical repair items for aircraft is related to program elements. The program element most often cited in this connection is flying hours. Evidence of this relationship on a line item basis, however, has been sparse. This study suggests that although the supposed relation is intuitively plausible, for most line items it cannot be effectively utilized in projecting base level requirements. The basis of this conclusion is an analysis of demand characteristics for technical repair items for a variety of naval aircraft.     

A note on the “value” of bounds on EVPI in stochastic programming

The existing literature concentrates on determining sharp upper bounds for EVPI in stochastic programming problems. This seems to be a problem without an application. Lower bounds, which we view as having an important application, are only the incidental subject of study and in the few instances that are available are obtained at an extremely high cost. In order to suggest a rethinking of the course of this research, we analyze the need for bounds on EVPI in the context of its significance in decision problems.     

Optimal control for entry of many classes of customers to an M/M/1 queue

A method is developed for determining the optimal policy for entry of customers from many independent classes of Poisson arrivals to a first-come, first-serve (for customers admitted to the queue) single-server queue with exponential service times. The solution technique utilizes a semi-Markov formulation or the decision problem.     

Production planning for multi-resource network systems

Production planning for large-scale production systems requiring the allocation of numerous resources is considered. It is demonstrated how the dynamic activity analysis developed by Shephard leads to linear programming solutions of production planning problems. Three types of planning problems are formulated: maximization of output levels for a given time horizon; minimization of production duration for given output histories; and minimization of production costs for given output histories.