Joint pricing,assortment, and inventory decisions for a retailer's product line

Consider a set of product variants that are differentiated by some secondary attributes such as flavor, color, or size. The retailer's problem is to jointly determine the set of variants to include in her product line (“assortment”), together with their prices and inventory levels, so as to maximize her expected profit. We model the consumer choice process using a multinomial logit choice model and consider a newsvendor type inventory setting. We derive the structure of the optimal assortment for some important special cases, including the case of horizontally differentiated items, and propose a dominance relationship for the general case that simplifies the search for an optimal assortment. We also discuss structural properties of the optimal prices. Finally, motivated by our analytical results, we propose a heuristic solution procedure, which is shown to be quite effective through a numerical study. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

On the effectiveness of top‐down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands

We investigate the relative effectiveness of top‐down versus bottom‐up strategies for forecasting the demand of an item that belongs to a product family. The demand for each item in the family is assumed to follow a first‐order univariate autoregressive process. Under the top‐down strategy, the aggregate demand is forecasted by using the historical data of the family demand. The demand forecast for the items is then derived by proportional allocation of the aggregate forecast. Under the bottom‐up strategy, the demand forecast for each item is directly obtained by using the historical demand data of the particular item. In both strategies, the forecasting technique used is exponential smoothing. We analytically evaluate the condition under which one forecasting strategy is preferred over the other when the lag‐1 autocorrelation of the demand time series for all the items is identical. We show that when the lag‐1 autocorrelation is smaller than or equal to 1/3, the maximum difference in the performance of the two forecasting strategies is only 1%. However, if the lag‐1 autocorrelation of the demand for at least one of the items is greater than 1/3, then the bottom‐up strategy consistently outperforms the top‐down strategy, irrespective of the items' proportion in the family and the coefficient of correlation between the item demands. A simulation study reveals that the analytical findings hold even when the lag‐1 autocorrelation of the demand processes is not identical. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007.     

基于支持向量机的威胁判断模型

目标威胁判断是防空作战中一项重要内容,在建立目标威胁模型时,首先要挑选特征参数,分析了影响威胁度的若干因素.这里采用Rough理论中知识约简方法选择目标的特征参数;支持向量机是一类新型机器学习方法,由于其出色的学习能力,该技术已成为当前国际机器学习界的研究热点,利用支持向量机建立了威胁判断模型,给出了实例和解决此问题的支持向量机源程序.通过实例与神经网络法的结果进行了比较,结果表明支持向量机比较精确和简单.     

A self‐adapting genetic algorithm for project scheduling under resource constraints

This papers deals with the classical resource‐constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). There, the activities of a project have to be scheduled subject to precedence and resource constraints. The objective is to minimize the makespan of the project. We propose a new heuristic called self‐adapting genetic algorithm to solve the RCPSP. The heuristic employs the well‐known activity list representation and considers two different decoding procedures. An additional gene in the representation determines which of the two decoding procedures is actually used to compute a schedule for an individual. This allows the genetic algorithm to adapt itself to the problem instance actually solved. That is, the genetic algorithm learns which of the alternative decoding procedures is the more successful one for this instance. In other words, not only the solution for the problem, but also the algorithm itself is subject to genetic optimization. Computational experiments show that the mechanism of self‐adaptation is capable to exploit the benefits of both decoding procedures. Moreover, the tests show that the proposed heuristic is among the best ones currently available for the RCPSP. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 433–448, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10029     

机群超视距作战联合战术信息系统的效能分析

建立了机群联合战术信息系统在超视距作战中综合机群的传感器、导航和火力控制系统,组织对目标协同探测、辨识和火力控制的系统模型,以及它的效能评估模型.仿真计算表明此信息系统能有效增加机群超视距作战的效能,但噪声和欺骗干扰会显著地影响它的效率.     

Damage functions and estimates of fratricide and collateral damage

There are multiple damage functions in the literature to estimate the probability that a single weapon detonation destroys a point target. This paper addresses differences in the tails of four of the more popular damage functions. These four cover the asymptotic tail behaviors of all monotonically decreasing damage functions with well‐behaved hazard functions. The differences in estimates of probability of kill are quite dramatic for large aim‐point offsets. This is particularly important when balancing the number of threats that can be engaged with the chances of fratricide and collateral damage. In general, analysts substituting one damage function for another may badly estimate kill probabilities in offset‐aiming, which could result in poor doctrine. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 50: 306–321, 2003.     

Analysis of down times of jib cranes—A stochastic approach

In this paper a case study dealing with the maintenance problem of jib cranes is presented. A jib crane is viewed as a complex system whose performance is observed as a single realization over period of time. After pointing out limitations of existing stochastic models to analyze the observed realization a new family of bivariate stochastic processes is introduced. The data of jib crane is analyzed using new model and cross‐validated using part of the data set. It is noted that the new family of stochastic processes is useful to analyze bivariate data where one of the variables is finitely valued and the other is nonnegative and continuous. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 231–243, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10006     

Duality in constrained multi‐facility location models

We consider the ??_p‐norm multi‐facility minisum location problem with linear and distance constraints, and develop the Lagrangian dual formulation for this problem. The model that we consider represents the most general location model in which the dual formulation is not found in the literature. We find that, because of its linear objective function and less number of variables, the Lagrangian dual is more useful. Additionally, the dual formulation eliminates the differentiability problem in the primal formulation. We also provide the Lagrangian dual formulation of the multi‐facility minisum location problem with the ??_pb‐norm. Finally, we provide a numerical example for solving the Lagrangian dual formulation and obtaining the optimum facility locations from the solution of the dual formulation. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 410–421, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10010     

Rare‐event component importance for the consecutive‐k system

Various indices of component importance with respect to system reliability have been proposed. The most popular one is the Birnbaum importance. In particular, a special case called uniform Birnbaum importance in which all components have the same reliability p has been widely studied for the consecutive‐k system. Since it is not easy to compare uniform Birnbaum importance, the literature has looked into the case p = ½, p → 1, or p ≥ ½. In this paper, we look into the case p → 0 to complete the spectrum of examining Birnbaum importance over the whole range of p. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 159–166, 2002; DOI 10.1002/nav.10001