bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Management Science Roundup
Authors: Bucatinsky Julio 
Published: October 2008

—“Aftermath: Optimal design of an abortion clinic”; —“Planning of production and investment programs”; —“Automation of investment analysis”; —“Seen Elsewhere” with five overviews: (1) Applying Decision Theory to Improve Corporate Management of Currency-Exchange Risks (California Management Review, Summer 1975, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 41–49) by Steven C. Wheelwright (Howard University); (2) Examining Corporate Policy Using Multiattribute Utility Analysis (Sloan Management Review, Fall 1975, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 63–76) by Ralph L. Keeney (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis); (3) Markowitz Revisited (Financial Analysts Journal, Sep.–Oct. 1976, Vol. 32, No. 5, pp. 47–52) by Harry M. Markowitz (IBM); (4) Optimal Strategies for Personnel Selection When Candidates Can Reject Offers (The Journal of Business, Oct. 1976, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 478–495) by Robin M. Gogarth (INSEAD/CEDEP) and Hillel J. Einhorn (University of Chicago); (5) The Role of Formal Models in Technology Assessment (Technological Forecasting, 1976, Vol. 9, Nos. 1/2, pp. 139–190) by Joseph F. Coates (Office of Technology Assessment of Congress of U.S.).
Health Operations Research: A Survey of Programs of American Universities
Authors: Esogbue Augustine O. 
Published: October 2008

The delivery of health care in a technologically based culture has created complex problems which tax the ability and preparedness of those intimately involved with this industry to present optimal solutions. The Health Applications Section of ORSA as the technical umbrella for professionals in Health Care is perhaps one of the largest and most active sections in ORSA today. We were interested in examining the sources and methods used for generating professionals in this field. In an effort to answer this question, we conducted a survey which is summarized in the sequel. The survey covered the following aspects of a typical university's operation—program location; education programs: students, courses, projects, theses and degrees; research programs: funded and unfunded projects; and faculty: size and interests. A questionnaire was designed and distributed to approximately 17 major institutions with known interest and activities in the area. Sixty-five per cent of those contacted responded. The results follow.
Behavioral Science—Systems and Perspectives
Authors: Wynne Bye 
Published: October 2008

Occasionally someone weaves a net of thoughts together into a largely original and perhaps seminal pattern. “MIS Problems and Failures: A Socio-Technical Perspective” [Bostrom, Robert P., J. Stephen Heinen. 1977. MIS problems & failures: A socio-technical perspectives (Part I: The causes). Management Inform. Systems Quart. (Forthcoming).], soon to be published in the Management Information Systems (MIS) Quarterly, impresses me as being one of these rare gems. The theme of the article is that management problems become much more solvable when viewed in their environment as joint technical and social systems to be coresolved. Their article in MIS Quarterly will appear in two parts. Part I addresses the causes of problems. Part II is expected to “present the basic concepts and principles of the socio-technical system (STS) design approach, demonstrating how they apply to MIS design.” As we all do, Bostrom and Heinen borrow heavily from others. I mention this, not to detract from their work but rather to compliment them on their selection and to mention a few of those who are acknowledged as direct predecessors.
Summary of Student Panel Discussion at Philadelphia ORSA/TIMS Meeting
Authors: Nahmias Steven , Magazine Michael 
Published: October 2008

At the graveyard session (Friday afternoon) at the Philadelphia ORSA/TIMS Meeting, there was a lively panel discussion entitled “What's Wrong With Current OR Curricula”. Though this was not a new topic, the viewpoint may have been, as the panelists were all current students in OR programs. The session, which the authors chaired, was sponsored by the ORSA Student Affairs Committee. The panelists were sent four questions well before the Philadelphia meeting. This gave them the opportunity to develop their own thoughts on these, as well as to get feedback from their colleagues. In addition, they were asked to prepare written responses to these questions. This is an excellent practice which was started in an Education Committee panel discussion in Las Vegas chaired by Rich Burton and Dave Schrady. Fortunately, in Interfaces we have a forum for passing this information on to interested members of the community who weren't able to attend the session.
Biased Reflections on MS/OR Consulting
Authors: Clough Donald J. 
Published: October 2008

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. It is about some of the author's experiences as a consultant, and some lessons to be learned. It contains no graphs or mathematical symbols. It does contain anecdotes about the wife of the courtroom adversary, the case of the Coca Cola sneezes, the judge who was a sailor, etc. Readers may find the Author's Matrix of Important Experiences to be a useful model for self-analysis. Part 2 will follow in the February or May issue; tentative title. How and What to Use for $ucce$$ful Con$ulting.
The Sudan Transport Study
Authors: Saaty Thomas L. 
Published: October 2008

The Sudan, population 18.2 million, in area the largest country in Africa is traversed by the White and Blue Niles meeting at Khartoum and blessed with rain. It has the potential to be a breedbasket for Africa and the Middle East. Of an estimated 200 million agricultural acres, only 17 million are now cultivated—4 million irrigated. Essential expansion is needed of an existing sparse and far-flung transport system to develop agricultural areas and bring food to population centers and export outlets. The ADAR Corporation developed an adaptive matter transport plan under direction of the author, based on Wharton econometric models of the economy under four scenarios: the Reference Projection, Agriculture for Export, Balanced Regional Growth, and Arab African Interface. Using an emerging operations research theory of hierarchies and priorities, the scenarios were combined to generate a Composite Scenario. UN Food and Agriculturists estimated Sudan's supply and demand under Composite Scenario assumptions (with 4.3%, 6%, and 7.3% GNP rates). Air, road, rail, river, and port transport projects (103 in all) were identified and prioritized, satisfying economic, social and political constraints. Investment is currently under way along the lines suggested by the plan, with nearly $6 billion committed for transport and agricultural projects by several agencies including the Kuwait Fund, the Arab Fund, the World Bank, the Saudi Government, and the newly formed Arab Authority for Development and Agricultural Investment, a group of Arab investing countries.
Simulation of Tar Sands Mining Operations
Authors: Wyman F. Paul 
Published: October 2008

The energy crisis is upon us and new sources of energy must be tapped. One such pool is the vast reserves of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada. Of the estimated 600 billion barrels of oil locked in the sands, 300 billion barrels are deemed recoverable. The problem has been to extract the oil by a method both feasible and economic. Syncrude Canada Limited is to mine this raw material plus overburden at a rate of approximately 150 million tons annually in order to extract 125,000 bbl/day of bitumen. The tarsand must ultimately be moved several miles to an extraction plant. The mining scheme decision involved a capital cost in excess of half a billion dollars. The productivity of five mining schemes, four using bucket wheel excavators and one using draglines, was investigated in 1973 using dynamic simulation. The simulation models, written in GPSS V and Fortran, consisted of five essentially independent modules: mining, transportation, storage, extraction, and weather. Approximately 10 runs were made for each scheme. Factors investigated included mining procedures, equipment availability, and equipment sizes. The simulation runs were a major factor in the final selection of the mining scheme. For the plan selected, numerous sensitivity runs were performed to improve details of the mining design. The model continues to be a valuable tool in debottle necking and the on-going refinement of the mining scheme.
Successful Hospital Personnel Scheduling
Authors: Megeath Joe D. 
Published: October 2008

The practice of Management Science involves the search for a solution, or improvement, to a particular problem. All too often, though, Management Science is taken to be the application of sophisticated Management Science tools. This paper describes a situation in which a nonquantitative person with a problem, three students of Management Science, and one faculty member, were reminded of the above principle. The scheduling of shift-personnel is an on-going problem over a wide range of functions. In many of these cases, a “quick-and-dirty” method can be applied instead of sophisticated, computer-based models. The procedure described in this paper saves one man-week of effort during each planning period, with no increase in computer use or hardware.
Management Science Roundup
Authors: Bucatinsky Julio 
Published: October 2008

—“News: Proceedings of International Conference on Very Large Data Bases Available”; —“Corporate Cash Management”; —“From Mexico: Project Coin Mintage”. —Seen elsewhere: (1) Railyard Modeling: Part I, Prediction of Put-through Time. Part II, The Effect of Yard Facilities on Congestion (Transportation Science}, Feb. 1977, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 37–59) by E. R. Peterson (Queen's University, Canada); (2) Using a Multi-nation Economic Model: Projection of Economic Relations between Japan and Developing Countries in Asia (1975–1985) (Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 1977, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 121–142) by Akira Onishi (Soka University, Tokyo).
Improved Computer-Based Planning Techniques, Part 1
Authors: Glover Fred , Hultz John , Klingman Darwin 
Published: October 2008

This is Part I of a two-part series. It shows how advances in network solution techniques have brought about improved computer-based planning. We give examples of practical problems and their network models that have resulted in dramatic cost savings for OR/MS practitioners. Not only are the models more convenient (easier to visualize and communicate) than customary LP models, but the new advances enable them to be solved more than 100 times faster than LP models. Part 2 (coming in the November issue) will show how related models have led to further cost savings in practical applications.
Practice of Management Science—Orderbook Balancing Using a Combination of Linear Programming and Heuristic Techniques
Authors: Jain Suresh K. , Stott Kenneth L. , Vasold Edward G. 
Published: October 2008

In complex manufacturing situations, when product demand exceeds the manufacturing capacity by a very wide margin, both the production planning and scheduling functions become extremely difficult and time-consuming to handle—even with modern computers and sophisticated analytical techniques. Our studies had shown that in such cases the tasks of production scheduling and detailed planning could be made easier if the orderbook were first balanced in an aggregate manner such that monthly or other periodic demands were approximately in line with the manufacturing capabilities. We applied this basic approach in the development of an improved planning tool for Bethlehem Steel's roll manufacturing operations, where approximately 4,000–6,000 cast rolls of 300 different types, each requiring an average of ten operations, are machined in a large m/n job shop each year. This planning tool, which is a hybrid computer package combining linear programming and heuristic methods, is being routinely used to balance the roll orderbook. The quick estimate of shop capacity and due-date performance provided by this package gives shop management an improved ability to negotiate roll delivery and resolve order-distribution problems with the plants. Due dates are changed and/or orders are dropped during one or more rounds of negotiations with each plant, and a balanced, or feasible, orderbook for the plants as a whole is obtained. Accurate production schedules and long-term plans are then generated by elaborate simulation models.
A Quick and Dirty Response to the Quick and Dirty Crowd; Particularly to Jack Byrd's “The Value of Queueing Theory”
Authors: Kolesar Peter 
Published: October 2008

Queueing theory is a useful, important part of the tool bag of OR/MS, and any half serious professional ought to know it. To charge otherwise in a professional journal, on the basis of sending students to visit a two-clerk bookstore, seems to me absurd or malicious—take your choice. In that same bookstore I could prove that linear programming, inventory theory, network analysis, simulation, geometric programming, indeed virtually all of OR/MS is equally useless. Now, it is really very weird but over the years I've done similar experiments at Columbia with my first year OR students. Do you believe it, but the results were entirely different? In a pretty wide range of problems my students found queueing theory useful—and one application was even to setting red-green cycles on traffic lights. How do you account for the difference—the experimentor, the subjects, the environment? Maybe, but perhaps it's just that we were not quite so quick, or quite so dirty, or trying to be quite so cute.
To Queue or Not to Queue: A Rejoinder
Authors: Vazsonyi Andrew 
Published: October 2008

It's a good feeling to see a scholar of Peter Kolesar's stature take the time and effort to expound his views so eloquently in Interfaces. But while there is value in Professor Kolesar's comments, I feel he does not delve deeply enough. First, let me give credit to Professor Byrd [Byrd, Jack. Jr. 1978. The value of queuing theory. Interfaces 8 (3, May) 22–26.] who started the debate by asking “Of what value is queueing theory?” Professor Bhat [Bhat, U. Narayan. 1978. The value of queuing theory—A rejoinder. Interfaces 8 (3, May) 27–28.] gave a quick answer, essentially that there is great value to queueing theory. Now Professor Kolesar attempts to settle the issue by detailing the value of queueing theory. He also severely criticizes Interfaces. The issues raised by Professor Kolesar are of great importance to our profession, but I strongly disagree with some of his conclusions. I requested that I be allowed to respond to Professor Kolesar's letter, and postpone my column on Information Systems to the next issue. So let me examine the questions we are debating.
Fuel Management and Allocation Model
Authors: Darnell D. Wayne , Loflin Carolyn 
Published: October 2008

The Fuel Management and Allocation Model determines the optimal strategy for fueling aircraft and can be used to support both short and long-term planning. It has been used operationally by the Fuels Management and Flight Control Departments of National Airlines for over four years, resulting in multi-million dollar savings. The model specifies the best fueling station and vendor for each flight, based on prices, availability, fuel burn, flight data, and cost of tankerage. The model also uses extensive sensitivity analysis techniques to alert management as to when a new policy may be required.
A Critique of Capital Budgeting Questionnaires
Authors: Rappaport Allen 
Published: October 2008

Rosenblatt and Jucker, in a paper published in this Journal [Rosenblatt, M. J., J. V. Jucker. 1979. Capital expenditure decision-making: Some tools and trends. Interfaces 9 (2).], report an “encouraging” and “unmistakable” trend of increased adoption of discounting techniques that is regarded as “significant” and “in the right direction.” The basis for their conclusion is a review of 13 studies and surveys published from 1966 through 1975. Unfortunately, a number of the studies mentioned have serious design deficiencies which result in overstating the proportion of firms using discounting techniques and the relative importance in the capital budgeting process. To illustrate the kinds of problems that abound throughout published capital budgeting surveys, four of the surveys cited by Rosenblatt and Jucker were examined. Five surveys, not cited by Rosenblatt and Jucker, were examined with generally the same consistent pattern of deficiencies as those jointly on their list of citations and covered in this note.
A Survey of Management Science Implementation Problems
Authors: Watson Hugh J. , Marett Patricia Gill 
Published: October 2008

An increasing amount of attention has been directed to problems associated with the implementation of Management Science methods. This attention is undoubtedly due to a relatively poor performance record, since it has been estimated that only about 40% of Management Science projects are ever fully implemented. Numerous articles have been written about the implementation problem. Some are based upon “undocumented wisdom;” that is, nonempirically based observations about the problem. Others have been written by practitioners who describe the problem as they perceive it. A smaller number of articles are based upon survey data.
Manpower Planning for a Telephone Service Department
Authors: Globerson Shlomo 
Published: October 2008

Telephone communication is one of the major means by which many organizations serve their customers. The common problem of every telephone service department is the assignment of the proper number of representatives who have to respond to customers' calls; too few would produce a low level of service, while too many would produce a high level of service but the efficiency would be low. The objective of this study is to demonstrate an approach that can and has been used as guideline for improving manpower planning in a large telephone department.
The Illusory Diffusion of Innovation: An Examination of Assimilation Gaps
Authors: Fichman Robert G. , Kemerer Chris F. 
Published: October 2008

Innovation researchers have known for sometime that a new information technology may be widely acquired, but then only sparsely deployed among acquiring firms. When this happens, the observed pattern of cumulative adoptions will vary depending on which event in the assimilation process (i.e., acquisition or deployment) is treated as the adoption event. Instead of mirroring one another, a widening gap—termed here an assimilation gap—will exist between the cumulative adoption curves associated with the alternatively conceived adoption events. When a pronounced assimilation gap exists, the common practice of using cumulative purchases or acquisitions as the basis for diffusion modeling can present an illusory picture of the diffusion process—leading to potentially erroneous judgments about the robustness of the diffusion process already observed, and of the technology's future prospects. Researchers may draw inappropriate theoretical inferences about the forces driving diffusion. Practitioners may commit to a technology based on a belief that pervasive adoption is inevitable, when it is not. This study introduces the assimilation gap concept, and develops a general operational measure derived from the difference between the cumulative acquisition and deployment patterns. It describes how two characteristics—increasing returns to adoption and knowledge barriers impeding adoption—separately and in combination may serve to predispose a technology to exhibit a pronounced gap. It develops techniques for measuring assimilation gaps, for establishing whether two gaps are significantly different from each other, and for establishing whether a particular gap is absolutely large enough to be of substantive interest. Finally, it demonstrates these techniques in an analysis of adoption data for three prominent innovations in software process technology—relational database management systems (RDBs), general purpose fourth generation languages (4GLs), and computer aided software engineering tools (CASE). The analysis confirmed that assimilation gaps can be sensibly measured, and that their measured size is largely consistent with a priori expectations and recent research results. A very pronounced gap was found for CASE, while more moderate—though still significant—gaps were found for RDBs and 4GLs. These results have the immediate implication that, where the possibility of a substantial assimilation gap exists, the time of deployment should be captured instead of, or in addition to, time of acquisition as the basis for diffusion modeling. More generally, the results suggest that observers be guarded about concluding, based on sales data, that an innovation is destined to become widely used. In addition, by providing the ability to analyze and compare assimilation gaps, this study provides an analytic foundation for future research on why assimilation gaps occur, and what might be done to reduce them.
Modeling Coordination in Software Construction: An Analytical Approach
Authors: Koushik Murlidhar V. , Mookerjee Vijay S. 
Published: October 2008

Software development projects are typically team efforts, wherein groups of specialists work toward the common goal of building a software system. The individual efforts of team members need to be coordinated to ensure product quality and effectiveness of the team. In this paper we model the process of coordination in the construction phase of incrementally developed, modular software systems. The analytical model proposed here supports macro-level decisions regarding the development team size and the coordination policy, based upon micro-level interactions between the modules in a system. The objective in this model is to minimize the effort spent on coordination activities subject to the requirement that the system must be completed within a specified period. Results from the model are used to examine coordination related trade-offs. We show that: (1) more complex systems need a higher level of coordination than simpler ones, (2) if the time available for construction reduces, it is optimal to reduce the level of coordination, and (3) marginal productive output is a diminishing function of team size. The sensitivity of the analytical model with respect to its assumptions is studied by constructing a set of simulation experiments where these assumptions are relaxed. The results of these experiments provide support in establishing the robustness of the analytical model.
Redesigning Case Retrieval to Reduce Information Acquisition Costs
Authors: Mookerjee Vijay S. , Mannino Michael V. 
Published: October 2008

Retrieval of a set of cases similar to a new case is a problem common to a number of machine learning approaches such as nearest neighbor algorithms, conceptual clustering, and case based reasoning. A limitation of most case retrieval algorithms is their lack of attention to information acquisition costs. When information acquisition costs are considered, cost reduction is hampered by the practice of separating concept formation and retrieval strategy formation. To demonstrate the above claim, we examine two approaches. The first approach separates concept formation and retrieval strategy formation. To form a retrieval strategy in this approach, we develop the CRlc (case retrieval loss criterion) algorithm that selects attributes in ascending order of expected loss. The second approach jointly optimizes concept formation and retrieval strategy formation using a cost based variant of the ID3 algorithm (ID3c). ID3c builds a decision tree wherein attributes are selected using entropy reduction per unit information acquisition cost. Experiments with four data sets are described in which algorithm, attribute cost coefficient of variation, and matching threshold are factors. The experimental results demonstrate that (i) jointly optimizing concept formation and retrieval strategy formation has substantial benefits, and (ii) using cost considerations can significantly reduce information acquisition costs, even if concept formation and retrieval strategy formation are separated.