Multiproduct inventory systems with proportional ordering costs and stochastic demands are studied. New conditions are obtained under which a myopic ordering policy (a policy of minimizing expected cost in the current period alone) is optimal for a sequence of periods for all initial inventory...

Minimum average cost ordering policies for continuously reviewed two product inventory systems with joint setup costs are sought. Disappointly, the optimal policy, even in a simple symmetric case, is not always simple: For some values of cost and demand parameters, a policy that would be...

The Communication from Rodrick and Deborah Wallace repeats allegations that they have made in print [Wallace, D. 1977. New York city fire crisis, part one, the system is falling apart. Heights and Valley News (May) 10--11; Wallace, R., D. Wallace. 1977. Studies on the Collapse of Fire Service in...

A variance reduction technique is presented that is effective when the system characteristic to be estimated is strongly influenced by rare events. Applications to simulations of a simple inventory system and of the New York City Fire Department, where the rare events are back orders and serious...

The clinically detailed risk information system for cost (CD-RISC) contains definitions for several hundred severity-adjusted conditions that can be used to predict future health care costs. We develop a prospective Medicare CD-RISC model using a 5-percent sample of Medicare beneficiaries and...

In response to an incoming fire alarm, someone must decide how many and which engine and ladder companies (firefighters and their apparatus) to dispatch to the scene. Traditional dispatching policies assume that all of the designated companies are available at the time the alarm is received....

This paper deals with ethics in the context of the real-world practice of operations research (OR), once an analyst has taken on the responsibility of carrying out a rational-style model-based policy study for a client. OR models are often used by policy analysts to assist decisionmakers in...