This paper considers a "single bottleneck system": a multistage production system where all setups except one are zero. The stage with nonzero setup is defined to be the bottleneck; it may be thought of as the critical resource whose throughput largely determines the throughput of the entire...

This paper presents a method for optimal control of a running television show. The problem is formulated as a partially observed Markov decision process (POMDP). A show can be in a "good" state, i.e., it should be continued, or it can be in a "bad" state and therefore it should be changed. The...

The measurement of customer outage costs has recently become an important subject of research for the electric utilities. This paper uses a stochastic dynamic model as the starting point in developing a market-based method for the evaluation of outage costs. Specifically, the model postulates...

With the continuing growth in the number of opportunities available at virtual stores over the Internet there is also a growing demand for the services of computer programs capable of scanning a large number of stores in a very short time. We assume that the cost associated with each scan is...

This study considers multistage production systems where defective units can be reworked repeatedly at every stage. Production, as well as rework, is in lots requiring set-up and variable production costs, and orders need to be filled in their entirety. The yield of each stage is uncertain, so...