bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A Case Study of Encoder Shift Scheduling under Uncertainty
Authors: Mabert Vincent A. 
Published: November 2008

This paper illustrates a shift scheduling procedure for a commercial bank's encoder work force for check processing in the presence of daily work load uncertainty. The author presents a chance constraint model for determining the appropriate safety capacity, analogous to safety stock in inventory theory, to meet varying volume demands when forecast errors are present. A series of tests are conducted to evaluate the model's performance under different operating costs, forecast errors, and volume arrival rates, which are based on data collected at Chemical Bank. The results indicate this model provides low cost solutions. This study provides two contributions to managers and management scientists. First, even though the paper illustrates the encoder work force shift scheduling decision, the methodology presented can be extended to other service oriented organizations. The main elements that need to be present are: varying between day work loads, varying within day work loads, uncertainty in estimating work loads, and critical deadlines at specific times during the day. And second, a classification scheme is developed which indicates how the general shift scheduling problem in service organizations can be viewed. This classification system helps to structure this complex problem and indicates how this proposed procedure contributes to this important area.
The Chinese Postman Problem for Mixed Networks
Authors: Minieka Edward 
Published: November 2008

The Chinese postman problem is to find a least cost way to traverse each arc of a network at least once and to return to the vertex from which you started. Diverse problems such as the routing of road crews, police patrol scheduling, garbage collection and the programming of computer map printers can be modelled as Chinese postman problems. This paper surveys available solution techniques for the Chinese postman problem for totally undirected networks (when all streets are two-way streets) and for totally directed networks (when all streets are one-way streets). A known solution technique for networks with both directed and undirected arcs (both one-way and two-way streets) in which the degree of each vertex is an even number is also reviewed. A solution technique for these mixed networks in which some vertices have odd degree is presented. This technique is based on the before mentioned technique and requires the solution of a minimum cost flow problem on a network that is an extension of the original network. Some of the additional arcs in this network have gain factors (i.e., the flow leaving these arcs equals the flow entering times the gain factor) and the flows are required to be integer valued.
The Management System: Its Functions and Processes
Authors: Cunningham J. Barton 
Published: November 2008

What is management? In recent years, a number of schools or approaches to management have evolved. What is rather upsetting to the manager is that there are a variety of unrelated approaches without any suggestion of their relationship to each other. Even more upsetting is that some of these approaches seem to be based on the disciplines of particular researchers rather than their ability to help managers. The study explores the rationale underlying two predominant orientations. One is concerned with the process of management, while the other emphasizes the function of management. The managerial process involves such intuitive principles as planning, organizing, and staffing. The managerial function involves arranging equipment to perform functions such as procurement, production, and adaptation. The goal is to illustrate the relationship of these approaches to each other and to specific managerial needs. The study was conducted among top managers in six municipal organizations. The research utilized a questionnaire and decision-making simulation for gathering data on the relationship of each managerial orientation. The results indicate that each orientation deals with different areas of managerial action. Key managerial processes focus on integrating, making decisions, recording information, motivating, and negotiating. The managerial functions, in this study, are part of three subsystem efforts which are administrative, adaptive, and technical. When management is defined as a process, it has no relationship to functions; when it is defined as functions of specific subsystems, there is no positive relationship to the process.
Weighted Assignment Models and Their Application
Authors: Ross G. Terry , Zoltners Andris A. 
Published: November 2008

This paper defines the components and characteristics of an important class of models called weighted assignment models and identifies these elements in a number of existing and potential applications. The weighted assignment model represents problems with the following characteristics: A set of tasks must be divided among a set of agents, and each task must be completed by only one agent. Tasks may be completed at one of several predetermined levels. When an agent completes a task at some level, a resource possessed by the agent is consumed and a system disutility is incurred. The weighted assignment model may be used to determine the best assignment of tasks to agents and the task completion levels so as to minimize total system disutility while satisfying the agent resource constraints. In the first part of the paper, a general formulation is presented, and its relationship to assignment models, transportation models, knapsack models and various fixed charge models is established. In the second part of the paper, a number of applications are described which demonstrate the usefulness of weighted assignment models. These applications include machine loading problems, personnel assignment problems and districting problems. Computational results for several of the applications are presented to document the tractability of the models.
On the Optimal Allocation of Work in Symmetrically Unbalanced Production Line Systems with Variable Operation Times
Authors: Hillier Frederick S. , Boling Ronald W. 
Published: November 2008

This paper provides results related to the optimal design of unpaced production lines. It has been shown previously that unbalancing an unpaced production line in an appropriate way will increase its production rate. Results are presented here which show how the optimal allocation of work between stations changes with respect to — the number of work stations in the line, — the limit on the amount of work-in-progress, and — the variance of station operation times. An analysis of results given here demonstrate the following system characteristics. When the number of stations in the production line increases, the average amount of unbalance in the optimal allocation remains about the same, but the increase in mean production rate obtained by using the optimal allocation rather than the balanced line becomes substantially larger. If the operation times are highly variable (exponential distribution), the effect of increasing in-process storage space is to substantially decrease the average amount of unbalance in the optimal allocation but to only slightly decrease the resulting improvement over the balanced line. If the amount of in-process storage space is very small, the effect of decreasing the variability of operation times is to decrease these same quantities but at a surprisingly slow rate. On the other hand, the effect of simultaneously increasing in-process storage space and decreasing the variability of operation times is to very rapidly decrease both the optimal unbalance and the resulting improvement. The model used to characterize an unpaced production line system is the classical queueing system with finite queues in series.
On the Decentralized Capital Budgeting Problem under Uncertainty
Authors: Obel Börge , Vander Weide James 
Published: November 2008

This paper deals with decentralized capital budgeting problems when decision objectives are not necessarily identical with those of corporate headquarters. This paper extends previous analysis of this problem to the case where (i) the cash flows resulting from managerial actions are uncertain, (ii) division managers have nonlinear utility functions which differ from those of top management with respect to risk aversion and (iii) resource constraints may be nonlinear. Several realistic considerations arise in this context which were absent in previous analyses. First, because the division managers' utility functions reflect differing attitudes toward risk, top management has the opportunity to share some business risk with the division managers. We recommend a transfer pricing scheme that accounts for this possibility. Second, if the transfer prices for capital resources are state-dependent and the division managers make their investment decisions before the state of nature is revealed, the division managers will want to hedge against the additional uncertainty caused by this aspect of the problem. Despite the static nature of the analysis this paper raises the interesting problem of information flow within the firm and suggests ways to motivate division managers to act in the best interest of the firm. The transfer pricing algorithm has additional interesting applications.
A Multiple Objective Approach to Space Planning for Academic Facilities
Authors: Ritzman Larry , Bradford John , Jacobs Robert 
Published: November 2008

This paper addresses the office layout problem where existing offices vary considerably as to relevant criteria and yet permanent walls make it impractical to remodel existing spaces. The major objective of this study was the equitable reassignment of 144 offices to 289 faculty and staff members in 6 academic departments with the College of Administrative Science at The Ohio State University. Since the building contains 5 floors and a wide diversity of office quality, six conflicting objectives have been recognized. In order to adequate address these multiple objectives, a large mixed-integer goal programming model was formulated. A companion interactive computer program was also developed to evaluate the performance of each solution with respect to these objectives. The goal programming model served to evaluate several layout strategies and identify the tradeoffs implicit in the problem. The interactive computer program helped translate these insights into a final compromise solution. There are two interesting findings of the study. The first one is desirability of allowing the decision makers to be in command of the solution process. This may be particularly important when several decision makers must compete for the same resources. Another finding is that a linear programming code is sufficient for this particular formulation of a mixed-integer model. Although the model contains over 1,700 integer variables, a very few non-integer values were generated. This avoided the computational burden of a mixed-integer code. The model presented here has its generic roots in the so-called “assignment problems,” with the added feature of recognizing multiple objectives. It is felt that with the proper modifications, the ideas presented here may well be extended to location-distribution and other types of assignment problems. These models have been applied to the layout of the College, with the final implementation having occurred during the Summer Quarter, 1978.
Managerial Response to Technological Innovation in Public Sector Organizations
Authors: Feller Irwin 
Published: November 2008

Technological innovation is widely seen as a means for raising productivity levels in state and local government. Growing evidence indicates that (1) senior level bureaucrats have primary responsibility for decisions concerning the adoption of innovations, and (2) innovations adopted by state and local governments are of two types—cost-reducing and service-augmenting. A formal explanation is advanced for the apparent preference of bureaucrats for service-augmenting innovations. Service-augmenting innovations tend to increase agency budgets to which bureaucratic emoluments are positively correlated, to expand the clientele served by an agency, and to obscure agency production costs by simultaneously altering both the input mixes and the services being provided. Federal policies designed to foster a more rapid diffusion of technological innovations are, in part, based upon the expectation that technological innovations will lessen the budgetary pressures upon state and local governments. The analysis presented here suggests that there may be countervailing pressures within the adoption processes of state and local governments which weaken the implied relationship between technological change and productivity improvement.
On Comparison of Cash Flow Streams
Authors: Landau H. J. 
Published: November 2008

In problems where planning over time plays a role, natural objects for consideration are cash flow streams. In order to compare different policies we require some preference ordering over these streams. A customary approach to this problem is to assume that money can be borrowed and lent freely at some fixed interest rate—i.e., that there exists a perfect capital market—and to compare streams with respect to such borrowing and lending. The induced ordering is based on the size of a single quantity, termed the discounted value, obtainable from the stream by a linear calculation. In this note we consider preference rankings of cash streams in imperfect capital markets; in particular, we suppose that the interest rate may depend on the size of the loan. We introduce an ordering based, as before, on the ability to convert one stream into another by borrowing and lending, and we describe its structural features: salient here is the fact that there generally exist incomparable streams. We then specialize to the case that the interest rate is constant but different for borrowing and lending, and repayment is either short-term or long-term. There we show that, when one stream is preferred to another, it has a larger discounted value with respect to each interest rate in the range between the borrowing and lending rates. The present model therefore provides a simple example of a situation in which discounting a stream over a variety of interest rates enters naturally into the preference ranking.
State of the Art—Auctions and Bidding Models: A Survey
Authors: Engelbrecht-Wiggans Richard 
Published: November 2008

Auctions and bidding models are attracting an ever increasing amount of attention. The Stark and Rothkopf (Stark, R. M., M. H. Rothkopf. 1979. Competitive bidding: a comprehensive bibliography. Oper. Res. 27 (2) 364–390.) bibliography includes approximately 500 works in the area. Additional work has appeared since the bibliography was compiled. This paper surveys the main theoretical results and research efforts of the literature on auctions and bidding. A framework is presented for classifying and describing various auctions and bidding models based on the types of assumptions made for the models' various parameters. The major works, ideas, and results of the literature are surveyed in terms of this framework.
A Stochastic Constrained Optimization Model for Determining Commercial Fishing Seasons
Authors: Gaither Norman 
Published: November 2008

Fisheries management must set fishing seasons that define either length of season, amount of seasonal catch, or both. These seasons are traditionally set with one overriding concern—protect the bio-mass of the fishery. In this paper, a stochastic constrained optimization model is developed for a multi-species fishery that sets the seasonal catch by species, by geographical area, and by month of the season. The model maximizes vessel fleet contribution over a one year planning horizon within certain biological, environmental, market, and production capacity constraints. The model explicitly treats such sources of uncertainty as catch per species, catch per unit of effort, weather, and markets by a computer simulation procedure. This method allows random variation of any parameter of the mathematical programming problem. The procedure selects a single set of parameter values for the problem, executes the mathematical programming algorithm, and stores that cycle's results. These steps are repeated until the desired number of cycles have been completed. A statistical summary of the objective function values, decision variable values, and slack variable values completes the procedure. The model demonstrated an 11% improvement for the 1976–1977 Alaskan crab fleet's contribution over commercial fishing seasons set by traditional means. The model continues to be updated and evaluated annually. The model of this study should be of interest to managers of organizations whose products are renewable natural resources or other organizations who must set production schedules within resource and market constraints in environments characterized by many parameters subject to random variation.
Implicit Intransitivity Under Majority Rule with Mixed Motions
Authors: Flood Merrill M. 
Published: November 2008

When several persons organized as a group are to choose one from among several specified alternatives they may make use of majority voting or some other decision-making process. This paper considers the case in which the decision process includes among the alternatives some that are probability mixtures of others. Examples are presented to illustrate the way in which a situation that is transitive under majority voting rule becomes intransitive when mixtures of the same alternatives are permitted. If utility product maximization is used to determine the group choice, as an agreed upon arbitration process when utilities are assigned to the alternatives by each group member but without interpersonal comparability, some examples are presented to illustrate the results of this method. It is reasoned that some such method is often clearly preferable to majority voting in order both to allot more appropriate influence to minorities and to accommodate for differences in importance of alternatives beyond those represented by individual rank orderings. The utility product maximization section includes several numerical examples to illustrate relationships between the findings of this paper and familiar work in game theory by Nash, and by Luce and Raiffa, where this approach has been suggested as a possible method for “arbitration.” Other numerical examples utilize inequalities to illustrate intransitivity effects like those discussed previously by Zeckhauser and Shepsle, and also in the context of Arrow's celebrated Impossibility Theorem.
Exceptional Paper—A Theory of the U.S. Treasury Market Equilibrium
Authors: Barry John Y. , Ayres Herbert F. 
Published: November 2008

Above maturities of six months to a year, the equilibrium yield to maturity for government securities consists of two statistically independent components. The first, the so-called “consol yield,” is the same for every maturity. The change in the consol yield has the same impact on yield for every maturity and the mere knowledge of its sign dominates opportunities for trading profits. However the expected change in the consol yield and all other yields is zero. The absolute value of the second component, “spread,” declines exponentially as maturity lengthens, despite variations in both its sign and magnitude. Examination of 20 years of evidence suggests that any departures of actual yields from the exponential model are only temporary. The authors argue that their model satisfies the “no free lunch” property of efficient securities markets: There is no strategy that will increase expected total return in the absence of forecasting skill. They also argue that their model is consistent with the trading behavior of professional bond managers, who judge the yield on a bond by making “butterfly comparisons” with yields on bonds of greater and lesser maturity, disregarding investment horizon. Finally, they present the full stochastic model of the equilibrium yields, and test it economically and statistically. It is in conflict with many “modern” financial theories, but it provides a description of what must be done to beat a buy and hold strategy without which no paper on any market is complete.
Assessment of Simple Joint Time/Risk Preference Functions
Authors: Barrager Stephen M. 
Published: November 2008

In choices between consumption and investment the consumer's objective is to maximize the expected utility of lifetime consumption. This paper outlines a procedure for constructing cardinal utility functions which capture both a consumer's willingness to trade off consumption between years and his attitude toward bearing risk. Simple but flexible utility functions are specified uniquely by mathematically combining the results of three straightforward assessment tasks. The information to be assessed from the consumer is: A preferred consumption pattern for an appropriate lifetime consumption budget. A coefficient of consumption variation aversion. A coefficient of risk aversion with respect to constant annual equivalent consumption outcomes. The consumer performs the first two tasks under deterministic conditions. Uncertainty is introduced in the last step. The advantage of this encoding procedure is the separation of deterministic trade offs and risk preference assessment into tractable, concrete subtasks. The major contribution of this paper is the introduction of a local preference parameter with global implications similar to Pratt's risk aversion coefficient. The local parameter, called consumption variation aversion, is a measure of a consumer's attitude toward undesirable variations in the future consumption pattern. If the preference function V(c) is additive then constant variation aversion implies V(c) is a sum of exponential terms. If variation aversion is inversely proportional to consumption then V(c) is a polynomial with positive exponents. Members of these function families are simple yet they provide great flexibility in describing preferences.
The Effects of Promotion by Seniority in Growth-Constrained Organizations
Authors: Stanford Robert E. 
Published: November 2008

This paper develops a balanced growth fractional flow model for the opportunities for promotion, length of service, and career earnings of personnel in a hierarchical manpower organization, and relates these characteristics to the expenditures needed to maintain the system for a specified period of operation. The primary controls available in the model are the proportions of rank members promoted to higher ranks during each period, the proportions of personnel in each rank who are promoted on the basis of seniority, and the growth rate of the sire of the system. Using an analytical approach, we investigate the responses to different emphases on seniority in the promotion process, and determine the effect of alternative system growth rates on these responses. Among significant findings are: (i) in systems of stable size, mobility, time-in-service and some career earnings characteristics are independent of the emphasis on seniority in the promotion process; (ii) both the maximum possible periods of service in each rank and the average levels of experience in each rank decrease as promotions-by-seniority increase and as the system growth rate increases; (iii) the total time served in each rank decreases as the system growth rate increases, but decreases as promotions-by-seniority increase only in systems that are stable or growing in size; in contracting systems, total time served in each rank increases as promotions-by-seniority increase; (iv) the trends for changes in the mobility of members in each rank are opposite to those for total time served in the rank; (v) the rank support costs decrease as the promotion rates, the system growth rate, and promotions-by-seniority increase, although these costs are much less sensitive to different emphases on seniority than to changes in the growth rate.