This paper presents an asymptotic analysis of a hierarchical manufacturing system with machines subject to breakdown and repair. The rate of change in machine states is much larger than the rate of fluctuation in demand and the rate of discounting of costs, and this gives rise to a limiting...

We consider the scheduling problem of cyclic production in a bufferless dual-gripper robot cell processing a family of identical parts. The objective is to find an optimal sequence of robot moves so as to maximize the long-run average throughput rate of the cell. While there has been a...

This paper considers optimal infinite horizon stochastic production planning problems with capacity and demand to be finite state Markov chains. The existence of the optimal feedback control is shown with the aid of viscosity solutions to the dynamic programming equations. Turnpike set concepts...

Focuses on a study which developed a framework for forecast and decision horizons. Definition of finite and infinite horizon stochastic optimization problems for a given forecast; Description of the general framework; Conditions for the existence of a solution horizon; Development of sufficient...

We solve an agent's optimization problem of meeting demands for cash over time with cash deposited in bank or invested in stock. The stock pays dividends and uncertain capital gains, and a commission is incurred in buying and selling of stock. We use a stochastic maximum principle to obtain...

In this note, we extend the sufficiency conditions obtained by Bean and Smith for the existence of decision and forecast horizons in discounted deterministic problems to a stochastic environment. Also developed are some examples for illustration of the results and the need for the development of...

We consider a single machine, multiproduct manufacturing system, which can operate at finitely many quality levels. The quality of the machine deteriorates according to a continuous-time Markov process and the only way to improve the quality is by replacing the machine by a new one. In this...

This paper is concerned with long-run average cost minimization of a stochastic inventory problem with Markovian demand, fixed ordering cost, convex surplus cost, and lost sales. The states of the Markov chain represent different possible states of the environment. Using a vanishing discount...

We consider a newsvendor problem with partially observed Markovian demand. Demand is observed if it is less than the inventory. Otherwise, only the event that it is larger than or equal to the inventory is observed. These observations are used to update the demand distribution from one period to...

The newsvendor problem is relatively easy to solve when the distribution of demand for newspapers is known. When the demand is unknown, the newsvendor faces a dual problem in the sense of Feldbaum (1960): to choose a decision variable that maximizes profit in the present period, and choose a...