In this paper we describe a decision support system developed to help in assessing the need for various type of prison cells. In particular we predict the probability that a criminal has to be sent home because of a shortage of cells. The problem is modelled through a queueing network with...

In this paper we study a model to estimate the probability that a target group of an advertising campaign is reached by a commercial message a given number of times. This contact frequency distribution is known to be computationally difficult to calculate because of dependence between the...

In most multi-item inventory systems, the ordering costs consist of a major cost and a minor cost for each item included. Applying for every individual item a cyclic inventory policy, where the cycle length is a multiple of some basic cycle time, reduces the major ordering costs. An efficient...

In this paper we discuss a general framework for single component replacement models. This framework is based on the regenerative structure of these models and by using results from renewal theory a unified presentation of the discounted and average finite and infinite horizon cost models is...

A railway system needs a substantial amount of maintenance. To prevent unexpected breakdowns as much as possible, preventive maintenance is required. In this paper we discuss the Preventive Maintenance Scheduling Problem (PMSP), where (short) routine activities and (long) unique projects have to...

In this article we give an overview of the relation between planning of maintenance and production. On the one hand we consider production planning and scheduling models in which failures and maintenance aspects are taken into account. Next we discuss the planning of maintenance activities, for...

The consideration of environmental issues has emerged as a topic of critical importance for today’s globalized supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to develop a strategic-tactical decision-support methodology to assist managers in evaluating the impact of environmental issues,...

Most maintenance-optimisation models assume an infinite planning horizon and suppose that the failure process is stationary. Hence, information which is not known beforehand and which becomes available on the short term only, must be ignored. We consider in this paper a multi-component system...