An EOQ model with multiple suppliers and random capacity

We consider an EOQ model with multiple suppliers that have random capacities, which leads to uncertain yield in orders. A given order is fully received from a supplier if the order quantity is less than the supplier's capacity; otherwise, the quantity received is equal to the available capacity. The optimal order quantities for the suppliers can be obtained as the unique solution of an implicit set of equations in which the expected unsatisfied order is the same for each supplier. Further characterizations and properties are obtained for the uniform and exponential capacity cases with discussions on the issues related to diversification among suppliers. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006     

大规模 MIMO系统中用户分层变长时隙分配方法研究

大规模MIMO系统时分双工模式中分配的物理时隙长度是固定的,不能根据不同时长的信道相干时间灵活地调整长度,二者长度的不匹配导致部分时频资源的浪费,因此系统的总体容量不能达到最优。针对此问题本文提出一种用户分层变长时隙分配方法,即根据不同终端的移动性对终端进行分层,并为不同层中的移动终端灵活地分配不同时长的物理时隙,使物理时隙长度与移动终端所对应信道的相干时长相匹配,从而减少时频资源的浪费,提高了资源利用率。同时,避免了低速移动终端过频繁的信道估计,降低了信道训练序列开销,使系统的总体数据容量得到很大的提升。实验仿真结果验证了本文所提方法的有效性。     

运输机装载规划视景仿真技术的研究

以运输机装载规划过程为仿真对象,建立简化数学模型,然后结合Unity3D引擎,运用视景仿真技术相关知识,把运输机装载规划全过程、运输机装载过程中质心变化等进行实时显示。运用视景仿真技术进行运输机装载规划,可对真实装载规划过程起到重要的引导作用,并且能够有效缩短运输机装载规划周期,提高运输机装载效率。     

Homes for heroes? Assessing the impact of the UK’s Military Covenant

The British Military Covenant can be located in and from many sources and from 2011 onwards in primary legislation. This article argues that the provision of military housing amounts to an early test of how the military covenant is understood and used by those involved in defence policy, and those in the armed forces affected by it. It finds that housing was a prominent feature of how service personnel understood how they were valued, but was not explicitly understood as a covenant issue by those personnel or the officials in charge of the Defence Estates. We locate three reasons for this: (1) the covenant has been poorly translated from aspiration into policy practice, (2) the covenant is unevenly understood across its stakeholders which has the effect of generating disappointment through misaligned expectations, (3) those engaged in the reform process surrounding the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) saw the covenant as a means to energise reform. Ultimately housing was seen as a dry and technocratic business area and thus an issue ripe for being refracted through the covenant was ultimately left outside of its remit.     

Majority rule,minority issues: The Macedonian question in the Dekemvriana

This article examines the role of the Macedonian Question in the 1944 December Uprising (Dekemvriana) in Greece. While the Dekemvriana is commonly portrayed in right–left terminology in the historiography, this article argues that part of the reason for the left’s failure was their inability to manage the Macedonian ethnic component of the struggle, either within their armed forces or in their relationship with Yugoslavia. As such, this article integrates the early phases of the Greek Civil War into the broader literature on minorities in civil conflict, while simultaneously exposing some of the myths about Macedonian involvement that result from its contemporary political ramifications.     

A risk function for the stochastic modeling of electric capacity expansion

We present a stochastic optimization model for planning capacity expansion under capacity deterioration and demand uncertainty. The paper focuses on the electric sector, although the methodology can be used in other applications. The goals of the model are deciding which energy types must be installed, and when. Another goal is providing an initial generation plan for short periods of the planning horizon that might be adequately modified in real time assuming penalties in the operation cost. Uncertainty is modeled under the assumption that the demand is a random vector. The cost of the risk associated with decisions that may need some tuning in the future is included in the objective function. The proposed scheme to solve the nonlinear stochastic optimization model is Generalized Benders' decomposition. We also exploit the Benders' subproblem structure to solve it efficiently. Computational results for moderate‐size problems are presented along with comparison to a general‐purpose nonlinear optimization package. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 48:662–683, 2001     

The Demand for Military Expenditure in Europe: The Role of Fiscal Space in the Context of a Resurgent Russia

A variant of established work on the demand for military expenditure is developed based on a practical concept of fiscal space from the perspective of short-term government choices concerning public expenditures. A new indicator, referred to as fiscal capacity, is defined and used as a candidate explanatory variable in an empirical model of European defence spending over the 2007–2016 period. Fiscal capacity is found to outperform simpler measurements of economic conditions, notably GDP growth forecasts, in explaining changes in defence spending efforts as a share of GDP. Regarding security environment variables, the results suggest that Russia has recently come to be seen as a potential military threat by European nations, leading to defence spending increases, the more so the shorter the distance to stationed or deployed Russian forces, and particularly so by those European nations that have a land border with Russia. A prospective exercise is then carried out in order to assess the capacity of EU member states that are also members of NATO to reach NATO’s 2% goal for defence spending over a mid-term horizon.     

Excess procurement strategies by a dominant buyer under constrained supply

Supply chains are often characterized by the presence of a dominant buyer purchasing from a supplier with limited capacity. We study such a situation where a single supplier sells capacity to an established and more powerful buyer and also to a relatively less powerful buyer. The more powerful buyer enjoys the first right to book her capacity requirements at supplier's end, and then the common supplier fulfills the requirement of the less powerful buyer. We find that when the supplier's capacity is either too low (below the lower threshold) or too high (above the higher threshold), there is no excess procurement as compared to the case when supplier has infinite capacity. When the supplier's capacity is between these two thresholds, the more powerful buyer purchases an excess amount in comparison to the infinite capacity case.     

弹(箭)体级间连接结构准静载失效实验与数值预示

级间螺栓法兰连接是导弹(火箭)常见的连接方式,但破坏了整体结构连续性,且承载能力薄弱,在外荷载作用下易发生失效而使整弹(箭)结构强度丧失。根据实际导弹(火箭)连接结构特点,简化设计并制作了一组原理性实验件,设计了准静载加载实验测试系统和螺栓响应信号传感器,进行了两次准静载失效实验,并利用ABAQUS软件建立了对应的有限元仿真模型。根据实验效果和实测数据,分析了连接结构在准静载荷载作用下的失效机理,并对比验证发现有限元模型数值模拟效果和精度与实验吻合较好。研究结论可为弹(箭)体级间连接结构承载能力和失效实验设计提供参考。     

Stochastic production capacity: A bane or a boon for quick response supply chains?

The quick response (QR) system that can cope with demand volatility by shortening lead time has been well studied in the literature. Much of the existing literature assumes implicitly or explicitly that the manufacturers under QR can always meet the demand because the production capacity is always sufficient. However, when the order comes with a short lead time under QR, availability of the manufacturer's production capacity is not guaranteed. This motivates us to explore QR in supply chains with stochastic production capacity. Specifically, we study QR in a two-echelon supply chain with Bayesian demand information updating. We consider the situation where the manufacturer's production capacity under QR is uncertain. We first explore how stochastic production capacity affects supply chain decisions and QR implementation. We then incorporate the manufacturer's ability to expand capacity into the model. We explore how the manufacturer determines the optimal capacity expansion decision, and the value of such an ability to the supply chain and its agents. Finally, we extend the model to the two-stage two-ordering case and derive the optimal ordering policy by dynamic programming. We compare the single-ordering and two-ordering cases to generate additional managerial insights about how ordering flexibility affects QR when production capacity is stochastic. We also explore the transparent supply chain and find that our main results still hold.