A three‐stage procurement optimization problem under uncertainty

This article examines a problem faced by a firm procuring a material input or good from a set of suppliers. The cost to procure the material from any given supplier is concave in the amount ordered from the supplier, up to a supplier‐specific capacity limit. This NP‐hard problem is further complicated by the observation that capacities are often uncertain in practice, due for instance to production shortages at the suppliers, or competition from other firms. We accommodate this uncertainty in a worst‐case (robust) fashion by modeling an adversarial entity (which we call the “follower”) with a limited procurement budget. The follower reduces supplier capacity to maximize the minimum cost required for our firm to procure its required goods. To guard against uncertainty, the firm can “protect” any supplier at a cost (e.g., by signing a contract with the supplier that guarantees supply availability, or investing in machine upgrades that guarantee the supplier's ability to produce goods at a desired level), ensuring that the anticipated capacity of that supplier will indeed be available. The problem we consider is thus a three‐stage game in which the firm first chooses which suppliers' capacities to protect, the follower acts next to reduce capacity from unprotected suppliers, and the firm then satisfies its demand using the remaining capacity. We formulate a three‐stage mixed‐integer program that is well‐suited to decomposition techniques and develop an effective cutting‐plane algorithm for its solution. The corresponding algorithmic approach solves a sequence of scaled and relaxed problem instances, which enables solving problems having much larger data values when compared to standard techniques. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

New results on rendezvous search on the interval

In a rendezvous search problem, two players are placed in a network and must try to meet each other in the least possible expected time. We look at rendezvous search on a discrete interval in which the players are initially placed using independent draws (usually assumed to be from the same distribution). Some optimal solutions are known if this distribution is uniform, and also for certain other special types of distribution. In this article, we present two new results. First, we characterize the complete set of solutions for the uniform case, showing that all optimal strategies must have two specific properties (namely, of being swept and strictly geodesic). Second, we relate search strategies on the interval to proper binary trees, and use this correspondence to derive a recurrence relation for solutions to the symmetric rendezvous problem for any initial distribution. This relation allows us to solve any such problem computationally by dynamic programming. Finally, some ideas for future research are discussed. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 60: 454–467, 2013     

Notes on contributors

In 1897 and 1898, Winston Churchill participated in what late Victorian Britain termed ‘small wars’, first on India's northwest frontier and then in the vast wasteland of the Sudan. Churchill chronicled his experiences in these conflicts in personal letters, dispatches to newspapers, and in his first two books, The Story of the Malakand Field Force and The River War. These writings provide a snapshot of a particular period in the formative years of the great statesman, demonstrating through Churchill's eloquent analyses many of the contradictions concerning the conduct of small wars that have emerged in the present era.     

遗传神经网络在保障资源需求预测中的应用

针对现代战争条件下装备保障资源需求变化快,保障资源预测困难的问题,首先分析了影响装备保障资源需求的因素,根据实际情况选取了平均维修间隔时间(MTBM)、平均修复时间(MTBR)等8项影响装备保障资源需求的关键指标,然后将基于遗传算法(GA)优化的反向传播(BP)神经网络应用于保障资源需求预测中,构建了基于遗传神经网络的需求预测模型,最后利用1980年～2010年实际保障资源需求数据对模型进行了验证.验证结果表明,基于GA优化的BP神经网络预测模型有较快的收敛速度、较强的适应性和较高的预测精度,适用于装备保障资源需求预测.     

基于证据理论的军械装备修理能力认证评估方法

借鉴AHP法建立军械装备修理能力认证评估体系,并构建其递阶层次模型。确立体系各级指标权重中,引入D-S证据理论对多专家意见进行融合;综合考虑专家的权重和不确定度,并采用单值转换分布概率算法对专家评价分数进行换算,改进了AHP法受专家经验、知识限制,主观性强等缺点。经算例分析,该方法能准确可靠地评价型号装备修理机构的修理能力,减少专家主观因素对评估结果的影响。     

基于AHP与熵权的舰艇编队信息作战能力模糊综合评估

在确立了舰艇编队信息作战能力评估指标体系的基础上,运用AHP和熵权法,得到评价指标的综合权重.通过模糊综合评判,得出综合评判总分.以舰艇编队的信息侦察处理能力为例进行综合评估.最后通过进一步研究分析,构建了一种数学模型,用于找出影响舰艇编队信息作战能力的薄弱指标.     

改进的粒子群神经网络在飞控中的应用

针对BP神经网络对初始值敏感、容易陷入局部寻优且收敛速度较慢,提出用粒子群对神经网络的参数进行优化,同时设计了衰减的指数函数对惯性权重进行动态调整以提高算法性能.并应用该算法对导弹飞控系统的逆误差进行补偿,仿真结果表明,该方法对逆误差进行了有效的补偿,避免了局部寻优并提高了学习效率.     

液体储罐泄漏数学模型的改进研究

在液体储罐泄漏过程中,罐内压力是随泄漏时间变化的量,泄漏强度也随罐内压力而变化,但在已有对液体流泄漏数学模型的建构中,在后果计算时没有全面考虑罐内压力以及罐内液体闪蒸导致空间的物质量,获得的结果用于后果评价,就必然与实际情况存在偏差.应用数学方法,对液体泄漏模型进行改进,改进后模型把罐内压力以及罐内空间的物质量作为变量,可较真实模拟出泄漏时泄漏强度、储罐内气体压力及泄漏量随时间变化的大小情况,并模拟了孔洞液体泄漏,得出不太可能发生灾难性事故的结论.     

基于时频单源点检测和聚类验证技术的欠定混合盲辨识算法

针对欠定混合盲辨识问题,提出了一种基于时频单源点检测及聚类验证的盲辨识算法。检测各个源信号的时频单源点,利用奇异值分解的方法求解不同单源点集合对应的混合矢量,利用基于k均值的聚类验证技术完成源信号数目和混合矩阵的联合估计。算法放宽了已有方法对时频单源区域的假设,不需要假设信号存在时频单源区域,可以完成仅存在离散的时频单源点条件下的欠定混合盲辨识;同时克服了传统算法需要假设源信号个数已知的不足,可以有效地估计源信号数目。仿真结果验证了算法的有效性。     

火炮发射药装药自动识别方法

发射装药号是影响火炮身管寿命的重要因素,为自动识别火炮发射药的装药号,避免人工记录失误和完善火炮射弹履历,分析了装药号自动识别原理,运用火炮动力学分析理论和ADAMS虚拟样机技术,建立火炮发射动力学虚拟样机.通过仿真试验获取样本数据,应用BP神经网络进行学习和训练,从而建立装药号和测试数据之间的非线性映射关系,实现对火炮发射装药号的精确预测.