Motivated by a $2.2 billion inventory write-off by Cisco Systems, we investigate how duplicate orders can lead a manufacturer to err in estimating the demand rate and customers' sensitivity to delay, and to make faulty decisions about capacity investment. We consider a manufacturer that sells...

We study large-scale service systems with multiple customer classes and many statistically identical servers. The following question is addressed: How many servers are required (staffing) and how does one match them with customers (control) to minimize staffing cost, subject to class-level...