In this paper we study a model that minimizes the sum of production, employment smoothing, and inventory costs subject to a schedule of known demand requirements over a finite time horizon. The three instrumental variables are work force producing at regular-time, work force producing on...

We consider a deterministic, single product, discrete review, finite time horizon inventory problem, called the multiple set-up cost problem. The holding cost in each period is a nondecreasing (and sometimes concave) function. The distinguishing feature of our model is the ordering cost function...

Using the technique employed by the author in an earlier paper, the existence of an optimal stationary policy that can be obtained from the usual functional equation is again established in the presence of a bound (not necessarily polynomial) on the one-period reward of a semi-Markov decision...

In the standard search problem there is an infinite pool of items whose distribution of values is known. A decision maker draws an item from the pool, observes its value, and decides whether to keep it or to draw another item. He can keep only one item, and he seeks the item with the largest...

We consider a semi-Markov decision process with arbitrary action space; the state space is the nonnegative integers. As in queueing systems, we assume that {0, 1, 2, ..., n + N} is the set of states accessible from state n in one transition, where N is finite and independent of n. The novel feature...

We consider the problem of scheduling the production of a single product at each instant during a time horizon of length T (\leqq \infty ) so as to minimize the average cost per unit time; backlogging of demand and disposal of stock are not allowed. Two types of costs are incurred; the holding cost...

A common myth/conception, based upon the notion of increasing returns to scale in R&D activity, is that large firms account for a disproportionate share of innovations. In this paper we consider three types of informational returns to scale (cheaper, faster, and better) and examine the impact of...

When a product's price fluctuates at a store, how should rational, cost-minimizing shoppers shop for it? Specifically, how frequently should they visit the store, and how much of the product should they buy when they get there? Would this rational shopping behavior differ across Every Day Low...

We propose a game-theoretical model of a retailer who sells a limited inventory of a product over a finite selling season by using one of two inventory display formats: display all (DA) and display one (DO). Under DA, the retailer displays all available units so that each arriving customer has...

Expanding product variety and high customer service provision are both major challenges for manufacturers to compete in the global market. In addition to many ongoing programs, such as lead-time reduction, redesigning products and processes so as to delay the point of product differentiation is...