Business policy questions frequently involve competitive encounters among several different firms. Oligopoly theory in economics was devised to answer similar questions, but its results so far are largely confined to cases of monopoly (one firm), duopoly (two firms), and many firms (wheat...

In formulating linear programming problems, analysts tend to include constraints that are not binding at the optimal solution for fear of excluding necessary constraints. The inclusion of such constraints does not alter the optimum solutions, but may require many additional iterations to be...

A code for solving travelling salesman problem employing heuristic ideas is described. Acyclic permutations of the cities are constructed by first choosing two cities at random for a permutation of length two, putting the remaining cities in a random list and then inserting cities from the list...

A machine is to be bought, used for productive purposes for a length of time, and then sold. It is possible to do preventive maintenance while the machine is being used, if desired, in order to slow down the degradation of the machine's capability. The value of owning the machine is the sum of...