This paper studies the problem of scheduling jobs on parallel machines with setup times. When a machine switches from processing one type of job to another type, setup times are incurred. The problem is to find a feasible schedule for each machine which maximizes the total reward. We study three...

This investigation considers certain issues regarding the optimal design of unpaced production lines with variable processing times. Under certain assumptions, including an equal allocation of buffer storage space between the respective pairs of stations, it is known that the optimal allocation...

Tackling the steep increase in drug costs is an especially important issue among many health care providers and insurers. To entice the clinics to become more cost efficient, the U.S. federal government, as well as many HMOs, have developed various cost containment initiatives recently. However,...