Flexible capacity strategy in an asymmetric oligopoly market with competition and demand uncertainty

This article studies flexible capacity strategy (FCS) under oligopoly competition with uncertain demand. Each firm utilizes either the FCS or inflexible capacity strategy (IFCS). Flexible firms can postpone their productions until observing the actual demand, whereas inflexible firms cannot. We formulate a new asymmetrical oligopoly model for the problem, and obtain capacity and production decisions of the firms at Nash equilibrium. It is interesting to verify that cross‐group competition determines the capacity allocation between the two groups of firms, while intergroup competition determines the market share within each group. Moreover, we show that the two strategies coexist among firms only when cost differentiation is medium. Counterintuitively, flexible firms benefit from increasing production cost when the inflexible competition intensity is sufficiently high. This is because of retreat of inflexible firms, flexibility effect, and the corresponding high price. We identify conditions under which FCS is superior than IFCS. We also demonstrate that flexible firms benefit from increasing demand uncertainty. However, when demand variance is not very large, flexible firms may be disadvantaged. We further investigate the effects of cross‐group and intergroup competition on individual performance of the firms. We show that as flexible competition intensity increases, inflexible firms are mainly affected by the cross‐group competition first and then by the intergroup competition, whereas flexible firms are mainly affected by the intergroup competition. Finally, we examine endogenous flexibility and identify its three drivers: cost parameters, cross‐group competition, and intergroup competition. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 64: 117–138, 2017     

二维非线性正交异性材料的瞬态热传导反问题研究

针对正交异性材料的二维非线性热传导反问题,本文采用顺序函数法对表面热流辨识进行了研究。在求解反问题时用到有限体积法、牛顿-拉夫逊法并引入未来时间步长的概念。在每个时间步内,将待辨识热流视为非线性方程组的未知量,通过一个迭代过程进行求解。从文中的例子可以看出,真实热流和辨识热流结果相近,从而证明了本方法在辨识二维非线性热传导反问题时是准确、稳定、有效的。     

线性唯象传热规律下热机内可逆热经济学研究

对符合线性唯象传热规律(q∝Δ(T-1))的热机内可逆热经济学做了进一步研究,导出了在给定条件下Novikov热机的最优利润解析式,并得到了最优利润和相应的效率同其它参数间的关系.     

发动机隔热缸套热强度有限元分析

针对低散热发动机存在的热负荷状况,分析了非稳态导热有限元计算的特点:运用经验公式求出了发动机燃烧室部件燃气侧的传热边界条件;运用有限元法对隔热部件进行了热强度分析。计算结果表明:热负荷和热应力增大是造成隔热件可靠性降低的主要因素之一。     

Improvise,adapt and fail to overcome? Capacity building,culture and exogenous change in Sierra Leone

Military capacity building (MCB) is as problematic as it is ubiquitous, with the British experience in Sierra Leone providing a rare example of ostensible success. This article critiques the dominant conceptualisation of MCB as purely a principal–agent (PA) problem, using military change scholarship to examine the impact of wartime British intervention on the Sierra Leonean armed forces. Here, indigenous military change was both externally driven and fundamentally adaptive in nature, allowing MCB to bypass some of the difficulties predicted by PA models. However, this adaptive approach nonetheless failed to reconcile Western military values with prevailing Sierra Leonean culture, complicating post-war stabilisation efforts.     

More military base closure? Considering the alternatives*

Despite multiple base closing rounds, the United States Department of Defense still has excess base capacity, and thus President Trump and high-level Defense Department officials are calling for more base closure through the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. However, another BRAC may not be the optimal solution, because simple base closure is not an efficient way to reduce surplus base capacity. Thus, Defense Department officials should consider other methods to reduce surplus capacity, including reduction in base size, leasing excess base property, or transferring it to another government agency for a variety of alternative uses. The surplus capacity issue also offers an opportunity to DOD to reassess base utilization, to update base requirements with current and future force structure. While BRAC focuses on American military bases, the process and alternatives also have international applications.     

Evergreening and operational risk under price competition

“Evergreening” is a strategy wherein an innovative pharmaceutical firm introduces an upgrade of its current product when the patent on this product expires. The upgrade is introduced with a new patent and is designed to counter competition from generic manufacturers that seek to imitate the firm's existing product. However, this process is fraught with uncertainty because the upgrade is subject to stringent guidelines and faces approval risk. Thus, an incumbent firm has to make an upfront production capacity investment without clarity on whether the upgrade will reach the market. This uncertainty may also affect the capacity investment of a competing manufacturer who introduces a generic version of the incumbent's existing product but whose market demand depends on the success or failure of the upgrade. We analyze a game where capacity investment occurs before uncertainty resolution and firms compete on prices thereafter. Capacity considerations that arise due to demand uncertainty introduce new factors into the evergreening decision. Equilibrium analysis reveals that the upgrade's estimated approval probability needs to exceed a threshold for the incumbent to invest in evergreening. This threshold for evergreening increases as the intensity of competition in the generic market increases. If evergreening is optimal, the incumbent's capacity investment is either decreasing or nonmonotonic with respect to low end market competition depending on whether the level of product improvement in the upgrade is low or high. If the entrant faces a capacity constraint, then the probability threshold for evergreening is higher than the case where the entrant is not capacity constrained. Finally, by incorporating the risk‐return trade‐off that the incumbent faces in terms of the level of product improvement versus the upgrade success probability, we can characterize policy for a regulator. We show that the introduction of capacity considerations may maximize market coverage and/or social surplus at incremental levels of product improvement in the upgrade. This is contrary to the prevalent view of regulators who seek to curtail evergreening involving incremental product improvement. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 71–89, 2016     

Capacity expansion and cost efficiency improvement in the warehouse problem

The warehouse problem with deterministic production cost, selling prices, and demand was introduced in the 1950s and there is a renewed interest recently due to its applications in energy storage and arbitrage. In this paper, we consider two extensions of the warehouse problem and develop efficient computational algorithms for finding their optimal solutions. First, we consider a model where the firm can invest in capacity expansion projects for the warehouse while simultaneously making production and sales decisions in each period. We show that this problem can be solved with a computational complexity that is linear in the product of the length of the planning horizon and the number of capacity expansion projects. We then consider a problem in which the firm can invest to improve production cost efficiency while simultaneously making production and sales decisions in each period. The resulting optimization problem is non‐convex with integer decision variables. We show that, under some mild conditions on the cost data, the problem can be solved in linear computational time. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 367–373, 2016     

稀薄流高超声速飞行器气动加热耦合计算

针对稀薄流域高超声速飞行器的气动加热问题,开展耦合数值计算研究。通过引入牛顿冷却定律,将直接模拟蒙特卡洛数值模拟方法与结构传热计算方法相结合,设计一种可对全机外形进行气动热和结构传热计算的高效松耦合方法,实现飞行器防热层结构材料温度分布特性的数值模拟。在以钝锥外形为例对直接模拟蒙特卡洛数值模拟程序进行验证的基础上,采用该方法对X37B轨道飞行器外形长时加热与结构传热过程进行数值模拟,给出结构温度及热流密度随飞行时间的变化规律。研究结果表明,设计的耦合计算方法能够模拟稀薄流域高超声速飞行器的气动加热及结构传热耦合过程,可为该类飞行器的气动热分析及热防护设计提供技术支持。     

邻频干扰对跳频系统通信容量的影响分析

在已知台站布置的跳频系统中,针对邻频干扰对系统通信容量的影响,从信号信息熵角度,分析了接收点干扰信号和噪声的熵功率,利用信号熵和熵功率不等式,推导得出了以信道参数、干扰台站数和可用频点数为变量的系统通信容量公式。仿真结果表明,在干扰台站数较小时,接收点干扰信号的分布取决于信道参数,而不能简单地假设为高斯分布;并验证了所提理论在nakagami信道下的正确性。