The impact of operational decisions on the design of salesforce incentives

When facing high levels of overstock inventories, firms often push their salesforce to work harder than usual to attract more demand, and one way to achieve that is to offer attractive incentives. However, most research on the optimal design of salesforce incentives ignores this dependency and assumes that operational decisions of production/inventory management are separable from design of salesforce incentives. We investigate this dependency in the problem of joint salesforce incentive design and inventory/production control. We develop a dynamic Principal‐Agent model with both Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in which the principal is strategic and risk‐neutral but the agent is myopic and risk‐averse. We find the optimal joint incentive design and inventory control strategy, and demonstrate the impact of operational decisions on the design of a compensation package. The optimal strategy is characterized by a menu of inventory‐dependent salesforce compensation contracts. We show that the optimal compensation package depends highly on the operational decisions; when inventory levels are high, (a) the firm offers a more attractive contract and (b) the contract is effective in inducing the salesforce to work harder than usual. In contrast, when inventory levels are low, the firm can offer a less attractive compensation package, but still expect the salesforce to work hard enough. In addition, we show that although the inventory/production management and the design of salesforce compensation package are highly correlated, information acquisition through contract design allows the firm to implement traditional inventory control policies: a market‐based state‐dependent policy (with a constant base‐stock level when the inventory is low) that makes use of the extracted market condition from the agent is optimal. This work appears to be the first article on operations that addresses the important interplay between inventory/production control and salesforce compensation decisions in a dynamic setting. Our findings shed light on the effective integration of these two significant aspects for the successful operation of a firm. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 320–340, 2014     

Some comparisons of residual life of coherent systems with exchangeable components

Most of the research, on the study of the reliability properties of technical systems, assume that the components of the system operate independently. However, in real life situation, it is more reasonable to assume that there is dependency among the components of the system. In this article, we give sufficient conditions based on the signature and the joint distribution of component lifetimes to obtain stochastic ordering results for coherent and mixed systems with exchangeable components. Some stochastic orders on dynamic (or conditional) signature of coherent systems are also provided. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 549–556, 2014     

基于PEPA的舰艇编队防空过程建模及分析

防空作战是大型水面舰艇编队的主要作战样式之一。本文运用PEPA（性能评价过程代数）方法对舰艇编队防空作战全过程进行有效建模,形式化描述了预警探测、情报传递、命令下达、防空拦截等作战主要过程。建立的PEPA模型具有层次化结构,考虑了要素间相互协作,体现了编队防空作战分布、并发的特点。通过对建立的PEPA模型进行性能指标选择和稳定状态分析,得到了不同因素对编队能力发挥的影响情况,获得了防空作战的基本要素组成。从而提供了一种解决舰艇编队问题的新方法。     

Counterinsurgency American style: Considering David Petraeus and twenty-first century irregular war

This article examines the complex legacy of David Petraeus who was a key figure in the emergence of the US military shift towards counterinsurgency doctrine in the years after 2006. Although Petraeus has been perceived by critics as a publicity seeker, he can be credited with laying the foundations for a more serious commitment to COIN involving in particular in integrating conventional and Special Forces in arenas like village stability operations. The article looks a Petraeus's role in both Iraq and Afghanistan: it concludes that, in the case of Afghanistan, it is too early to assess whether counterinsurgency has had a decisive impact of the outcome of the war against the Taliban.     

考虑可观测度的反交会规避机动方法

针对具有自主接近能力的航天器开展了反交会规避机动方法研究。建立了仅测角相对导航模型,随后利用状态估计误差给出了可观测度的定义,量化了可观测性指标。以可观测度为评价指标,提出基于虚拟轨道的可观测度计算方法,以可观测度梯度对规避机动方向进行优化,保证了规避机动使目标航天器的可观测性达到最大弱化,并给出了规避机动大小计算方法。给出了仿真算例,结果表明提出的方法能够使系统的可观测性明显减弱,达到了设计要求,为规避机动研究提供了一种新视角。     

基于OMAPl510单兵通信系统中头盔子系统的实现

OMAPl510是德州仪器TI公司的双核架构处理器,整合了一个控制性能强的ARM925处理器、一个低功率消耗的高效能TMS320C55X数位信号处理器DSP。文中首先描述单兵通信系统的组成,并给出以头盔子系统为核心的基本工作原理图。然后介绍了0MAPl510的硬件架构和软件架构,并较为详尽地给出实现头盔子系统的蓝牙主控程序的主要代码。最后针对此头盔子系统蓝牙无线通信距离的局限性,提出与头盔共形的微带阵列天线的改进方案。     

使用多Agent模型求解N－难题的新方法

借鉴多Ａｇｅｎｔ模型思想给出了求解Ｎ－难题的新方法。将Ｎ－难题分成多个Ａｇｅｎｔ,赋予每个Ａｇｅｎｔ以算法,利用Ａｇｅｎｔ之间的协作和交互有效地进行问题求解。该方法将前人的指数时空复杂度降为多项式时空复杂度,实际实现结果表明了该方法可行、高效。     

卫星导航系统的体系安全性分析方法

为了应对卫星导航系统内部复杂关系等体系特征为其安全分析带来的挑战、全面识别和分析卫星导航系统面临的体系安全威胁、提高系统的安全性和服务能力,基于功能依赖网络分析理论提出了从体系角度研究卫星导航系统安全性的建模方法,重点对导航系统内组件系统之间交互关系导致的危险传播、任意失效组合进行了后果分析和原因调查。仿真结果表明该方法能清晰地描述危险传播和失效组合的过程以及进行正逆向的推理分析,也证明了该方法在卫星导航系统安全分析问题上的潜力和适用性。     

顾及时空语义的多主题瓦片数据优化检索方法

针对虚拟地球可视化中多个逻辑图层叠加产生大量同名瓦片索引重叠引起的数据无效访问和内存冗余等问题,提出顾及时空语义的瓦片数据优化检索方法。在客户端实现顾及时空语义的自适应瓦片优选,将视点信息与数据集的时空范围、分辨率和优先级等语义信息自动匹配与自适应筛选过滤,显著提高目标瓦片数据的命中率;在服务器端实现面向主题的内存数据库瓦片数据缓存,进一步提高瓦片数据二次访问的响应速度。实验表明,该方法不受逻辑图层增量影响,保证目标瓦片较高的命中率,缓存方法进一步提升瓦片二次访问效率,显著提高面向多数据集的海量数据实时可视化性能。