bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
An Experimental Comparison of the Effectiveness of Three Planning Methods
Authors: Nutt Paul C. 
Published: November 2008

Methods of planning based on systems ideas, behavioral science concepts, and heuristics were used to develop plans in a field setting, to contrast the merits of these planning approaches. Plans were evaluated by experts as well as decision makers and staff in the participating organization. Criteria such as quality, acceptance, and measures of innovation were used to contrast the plans. The perceptions of agency representatives that participated in the planning groups were also obtained. The systems method used planning groups that were composed solely of experts. In the systems method, objectives were established in the first phase of the meeting, and used as a basis to structure the development of plans. For example, the intent of the service delivery plan was established before recommendations were developed. The behavioral approach used clients, the recipients of the service to be planned, as planning groups members. These groups developed a list of priority client problems which were used as a focus to formulate plans. The heuristic approach was applied to simulate trial and error planning. In this approach, no structure was used in the generation of plan components, the leader merely recorded the ideas that were stimulated by a statement of the problem. In the heuristic approach, half the planning groups had just clients as members and the rest were made up of experts. The three methods of planning were applied to two problems—the development of plans for primary health care services, and home health care delivery mechanisms. In all, twelve distinct planning groups participated permitting a replication of each “problem-planning topic” contrast. The results of the experiment indicated that the systems approach produced better quality plans while the behavioral approach produced more new ideas. This suggests that involving an organization's client in planning of services to define their problems provides a rich array of ideas for the planning process, but that systems approaches and experts are needed to formulate these ideas and consolidate them into a viable plan. However, the participants found their experiences to be significantly less satisfactory when a systems approach was used. Several other implications of these findings for planning practice are discussed.
Combining Expert Judgments: A Bayesian Approach
Authors: Morris Peter A. 
Published: November 2008

This paper presents a new approach to the problem of expert resolution. The proposed analytic structure provides a mechanism by which a decision maker can incorporate the possibly conflicting probability assessments of a group of experts. The approach is based upon the Bayesian inferential framework presented in [Morris, P. A. 1974. Decision analysis expert use. Management Sci. 20 (9, May)]. A number of specific results are derived from analysis of a generic model structure. In the single expert continuous variable case, we prove that the decision maker should process a calibrated expert's opinion by multiplying the expert's probability assessment by his own prior probability assessment and normalizing. A method for subjectively calibrating an expert is also presented. In the multi-expert case, we obtain a simple multiplicative rule for combining the expert judgments. We also prove the existence of a composite probability function which measures the joint information contained in the probability assessments generated by a panel of experts. The interesting result is that composite prior should be processed as if it were the probability statement of a single calibrated expert.
The Value of Data for a Quadratic Decision Problem
Authors: Rice Thomas Richard 
Published: November 2008

A question that recurs in the decision analysis literature is: What is the value of additional data gathering? We use a very general definition of data that includes subjective probability distributions provided by experts, calculations from models, and traditional experimental data. General expressions for the expected value of data have little practical use because they involve probability distributions whose arguments are themselves probability distributions. The traditional approach to alleviate the problem of dimensionality is to introduce arbitrary parameterization of the data. This paper shows that for an interesting class of decision problems, arbitrary parameterization is not necessary. For the class of decision problems in which the value function over outcomes is a quadratic function of the state and decision variables, the value of data depends on the state variables only through the prior covariances of the posterior means. To use this result in the calculation of the approximate value of data for practical problems, it is necessary to simplify the value function. The paper suggests simplifying the value function by expanding it in a Taylor series with respect to the state and decision variables. The resulting expressions for the approximate value of information should be useful and inexpensive to evaluate for practical decision problems.
LIFO Inventory Systems
Authors: Cohen Morris A. , Pekelman Dov 
Published: November 2008

In many perishable product inventory systems where the issuing of stock to meet demand is controlled by the consumer, the movement of units through the system obeys a LIFO discipline. In this paper the evolution over time of the LIFO inventory stock age distribution in an environment of stochastic demand is analyzed. The inventory related processes are shown to be completely specified by the random walk ladder height process. This characterization of the LIFO system is then utilized to derive limiting distributions for the stock age distribution when a constant amount is ordered each period. The distribution is found from a Wiener-Hopf integral equation for the ladder height random variable. Transient results for the case of a fixed critical number order policy are also presented. Explicit closed form results are derived for an example in which demand is exponentially distributed. The paper concludes by demonstrating how the results on the steady-state age distribution can be used for devising upper and lower bounds on expected shortages and outdates.
Order-Level Inventory Systems with Independent Stochastic Leadtimes
Authors: Zalkind David 
Published: November 2008

Inventory systems where leadtimes are stochastic and independent, so that orders are not restricted to arrive in the same sequence in which they were placed, can arise if the vendor with whom orders are placed is unreliable in processing them or if orders for the same item are placed with different vendors at different times. We present a procedure for finding the optimal order-level Z (stock on hand plus on order) for a pre-determined scheduling-period t (time interval between decisions about placing orders), that is, a tZ policy. Backordering of shortages is assumed. Most results are derived when both the demand distribution and the leadtime distribution are discrete and bounded. The main concept employed in the derivation is the use of the distribution of the number of outstanding orders to find the distribution of the amount of stock on order. It is then shown that for tZ policies, the solution can be interpreted as the weighted average of constant leadtime systems. Further results that may be helpful in constructing heuristic decision rules are given. The nonoptimality of the sZ policy (i.e., order to Z whenever inventory falls to s) for independent stochastic leadtime systems is also discussed.
Strategic Planning for Management Information Systems
Authors: Ein-Dor Phillip , Segev Eli 
Published: November 2008

This paper deals with strategic planning for management information systems. Specifically, those variables of the strategic plan which impact on the success or failure of MIS are identified, and propositions are formulated relating states of the variables to system conditions. The variables concerned are the system development strategy, the purpose of MIS, the priority scheme, functions assigned the system, goals, definitions of requirements and documentation of the strategic plan. Two factors predominate in determining the appropriateness of strategic plans for MIS explicitness (the degree to which the process is conscious, formal and documented) and situational fit (the degree to which the MIS is compatible with the specific organization and its members). It is concluded that there is no one optimal, strategic plan for MIS. Each organization must develop that strategy which best fits its particular situation.
The Process and Product of System Design
Authors: Boland Richard J. 
Published: November 2008

Given that user involvement is important in system design, this study addresses the as yet unexplored question of how a user should be involved in the system design process. Two radically different processes of interaction between a systems designer and a manager were compared in an information system design exercise. In one interaction process, the designer conducted a traditional interview of the manager. He asked questions, analyzed data and made suggestions. In the alternative interaction process, there was an initial sharing of information and mutual suggestions, followed by a critique of each other's suggestions. The study found that for this ill-structured problem: The alternative interaction process produced higher quality designs with important implementation advantages. The two interaction processes produced designs which used different types of organization control strategies. These results may be due to a problem finding contingency—different processes of interaction may help to define different problems, and thereby produce different, but equally rational, solutions. For the management of organization design, the process of interacting with users has important implications for the quality of the resulting design, the type of organization control strategy employed, and the subsequent implementation of the system.
Performance and Autonomy in Organizations: Determining Dominant Environmental Components
Authors: Aharoni Yair , Maimon Zvi , Segev Eli 
Published: November 2008

The formulation of a strategy for an organization begins with identifying the opportunities and risks in the environment. A full and permanent search—or scanning—of all environmental forces is both too costly and intractable in terms of management time. Our findings indicate that managers do not try to identify all environmental forces. Identifying the dominant components of the environment focuses scanning efforts and saves energy and costs. Furthermore, our findings clearly point out that achievement of autonomy may be advanced by organizational performance. An optimal strategy for a manager seeking to increase autonomy would be to concentrate efforts on dominant environmental components. A spillover effect will generalize this autonomy.
Note—On the Maximal Covering Location Problem and the Generalized Assignment Problem
Authors: Klastorin T. D. 
Published: November 2008

In many public sector location problems, it is often desirable to locate facilities in such a way to minimize the number (or cost) of facilities while insuring tint all demand centers are within a stated maximal service time front any facility. However, when insufficient resources exist to allow die construction of enough facilities to serve all demand centers within the alloted time, the location problem is frequently restated in order to locate the budgeted facilities to serve the serviced population. Problems of the latter type are generally known as maximal covering location problems, which may have a number of extensions, including mandatory closeness constraints which place an upper bound on the maximal service time requirement for the entire population. This note demonstrates how this class of frequently encountered problems can be formulated as generalized assignment problems within the conceptual framework presented by Ross and Soland (Ross, G. T., R. Soland. 1977. Modeling facility location problems as generalized assignment problems. Management Sci. 24 (3, November) 345–357.) for other discrete public and private location problems.
Note—Some Results on Sojourn Times in Acyclic Jackson Networks
Authors: Simon B. , Foley R. D. 
Published: November 2008

Lemoine (Lemoine, A. 1977. Networks of queues—a survey of equilibrium analysis. Management Sci. 24 464–481.) studies sojourn times in acyclic, Jackson networks as part of his survey of equilibrium results. In his paper, he argues that a particular customer has a sojourn time at node i that is independent of his remaining sojourn time in the network given that the customer transfer from node i to node j. This assumption is then used to derive a set of equations involving the Laplace-Stieltjes transform of the sojourn times at each node from which several properties of sojourn times are determined. In a private communication, Mitrani (Mitrani, I. 1978. A critical note on a result of Lemoine. Private communication.) argues that the independence assumption is in error and provides a heuristic argument based on a four node, acyclic, Jackson network. From this, Mitrani concludes that the sojourn time in such networks is still an unsolved problem. We make Mitrani's argument rigorous, using some new results on sojourn times in Jackson networks.
An Exact Hierarchical Algorithm for Determining Aggregate Statistics from Individual Choice Data
Authors: Gensch Dennis H. , Svestka Joseph A. 
Published: November 2008

A review of the literature from many disciplines reveals conceptual agreement that individuals choose among alternatives by comparing the attributes of the alternatives in a sequential process. Yet in almost all the published empirical work the model used is a simultaneous compensatory model such as regression, logit, or probit. The sequential choice modeling approach has been severely retarded by the lack of an algorithm to generate the sample statistics projectable to hold-out samples and populations. This paper attempts to fill this void by presenting a prototype aggregate hierarchical model, called HIARC, for analyzing individual choice decisions. HIARC can be viewed as a semi-order lexicographic model that empirically estimates a set of tolerances directly from the data. HIARC and logit are applied to the same empirical data set. While the predictive accuracy is about equal, the two approaches yield different types of diagnostic information and the set of individuals whose choice is correctly predicted by one method is substantially different from the set correctly predicted by the other method.
Airline Safety: Some Empirical Findings
Authors: Barnett Arnold , Abraham Michael , Schimmel Victor 
Published: November 2008

We consider the fatal accident records of 58 major world airlines, and in particular try to compare appropriately the safety records of airlines whose route structures overlap and which thus compete for passengers. We separately review data about the 18 principal U.S. domestic airlines and 40 major international flag carriers. A good part of effort involves trying to develop sensible measures of safety performance, and considering differences between airlines that might make misleading the direct comparison of their accident rates. Our analysis leads us to conclude that: As a group, the U.S. domestic carriers have achieved a safety record that is excellent in both absolute and relative terms. There is no real basis for identifying any of them as especially safe or especially dangerous, for the disparities in their observed accident records are smaller than would be expected from chance fluctuations alone. Among international airlines, however, divergences in safety records arise that are both substantial and statistically significant. Generally speaking, large airlines from “Westernized” countries seem demonstrably safer than those from most countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. In all segments of the airline industry, fatality rates have dropped over 50% in the last 15 years.
A Capacitated Bottleneck Facility Location Problem
Authors: Dearing P. M. , Newruck F. C. 
Published: November 2008

This paper considers the problem of locating capacitated facilities to meet customer demands. The objective of the problem considers both a bottleneck transportation cost and a total cost of opening facilities. The structure of the problem is similar to that of the total cost capacitated facility location problem. Problems with a bottleneck objective function are solved via a Lagrangean relaxation. An implicit enumeration algorithm is developed to solve the relaxed problem. After a feasible facility configuration is selected, the resulting allocation problem is a bottleneck transportation problem. Special attention is given to the dual of the bottleneck transportation problem to aid the branching and fathoming steps of the solution procedure. Computation results are presented for several test problems.
Must—A Multiple Solutions Technique for Balancing Single Model Assembly Lines
Authors: Dar-El E. M. , Rubinovitch Y. 
Published: November 2008

Research on single-model assembly line balancing has produced several good algorithms for solving large problems. All these algorithms, however, generate just one solution to the balancing problem. With these, line designers wishing to investigate alternative station combinations of work elements are forced to do so manually. This paper concerns an algorithm (MUST) which generates alternative solutions of equal quality for single-model assembly line balancing problems. The method is based on the Mansoor-Yadin algorithm and in its optimum seeking form, MUST generates all existing optimal balances in a single pass. Three heuristics, used singularly or together, are introduced for solving the larger balancing problems. These are designed to produce about 100 different balance solutions of equal quality at each pass. MUST has been successfully used in balancing assembly lines having up to 140 work elements with widely differing precedence structures. A comparison of this method with MALB, one of the most efficient known heuristic methods, results in MUST dominating or equalling MALB in every case. Reasonable computation times (average 125.4 sec.—IBM 370/168) and core usage are achieved through the use of advanced computation methods. The need to explore alternative station combinations may arise in several ways—for example, the line designer may prefer (but not require) that certain work elements be allocated to a common station either because of: access to materials handling and storage facilities, service availability (e.g., compressed air lines), use of common tools or operator skills, etc. Alternatively, minor adjustments to the line may be required between adjacent stations in order to alleviate conditions at one station which exhibits excessive variability in its performance times. The generation of multiple solutions of equal efficiency adds a new dimension to the quality of balancing effectiveness, enabling the line designer to select the alternative that best suits his requirements.
Planning Horizon Procedures for Machine Replacement Models
Authors: Sethi Suresh , Chand Suresh 
Published: November 2008

This paper develops efficient forward algorithms and planning horizon results for several machine replacement models under an improving technological environment over time. The models are that of cost minimization, profit maximization, and cost minimization with probabilistic breakdowns. The conditions of the improving technological environment are stated in terms of operating costs, incremental profits, and expected operating costs, respectively, for these models. The state of technology can be assumed to improve every period or every so many periods. The conditions are fairly general and are likely to be satisfied by most improving technologies. What is shown, specifically, is that there exists a forecast horizon T such mat the optimal replacement decision for the first machine (new or existing) based on the forecast of machine technology until period T remains optimal for any longer (than T) horizon, and for that matter, the infinite horizon problem. In particular, it is possible to decide whether it is optimal to replace an existing machine at the beginning of a period or keep it at least one more period with much less information than the entire future forecast of technology. It should be noted that the forecasts become less precise farther into the future and that requiring an infinite horizon forecast for decision-making would be unrealistic. Because the planning horizon results obtained in this paper free the solution from an arbitrary horizon and ascertain the optimality of the first period decision or the first few periods decisions based on the forecast of technology only up to some finite period T, these results represent a major advance in the machine replacement literature. These planning horizon results also enable us to develop a computationally highly efficient forward algorithm for the models under consideration. The algorithm is illustrated with a numerical example. Another important corollary of the planning horizon results is that the optimal number of machine replacements cannot decrease as the length of the horizon (planning period) increases. Planning horizon procedures are shown to be easily extendable to the existing machine case as well as the case when machine lives are constrained within a prespecified finite interval. The paper concludes with various suggestions for future research efforts.
A Simulation Study of Predictable Due-Dates
Authors: Weeks James K. 
Published: November 2008

This paper describes a simulation study of assigning attainable or predictable due-dates in hypothetical labor and machine constrained job shop settings of varying size and structure. Several predictable due-date assignment rules are developed based on conditional estimates of individual job flow time derived from initial simulation runs. Mean lateness, mean earliness and mean missed due-dates are used as measures of shop performance to compare the various predictable due-date rules under conditions of varying dispatching rules and shop size and structure. Results indicate that due-dates assigned based on expected job flow time and shop congestion information may provide more attainable due-dates than rules based solely upon job characteristics. In addition, better due-date performance appears to be achieved when due-date oriented dispatching rules are employed and when the shop system is not structurally complex.
Does Lag Structure Really Matter in Optimizing Advertising Expenditures?
Authors: Bultez Alain V. , Naert Philippe A. 
Published: November 2008

In this article, we examine whether a better econometric specification of the sales-advertising relationship leads to significantly improved decisions. Extending the pioneering work of Nerlove and Arrow, we analyze the sensitivity of the discounted profit flow to the dynamics of advertising. On the basis of a generalized variant of their constant-elasticity model, we compare various lag structures, and derive the corresponding decision rules to determine the optimal advertising budget. Financial consequences of misspecifications of the distributed-lag function are then evaluated. Our investigation is empirically illustrated on the basis of the data which served Palda for his demonstration of advertising cumulative effects.