New currency recirculation guidelines implemented by the Federal Reserve System (Fed) of the United States are intended to reduce the overuse of its currency processing services by depository institutions (banks). These changes are expected to have a significant impact on operating policies at...

New currency recirculation guidelines implemented by the Federal Reserve System (Fed) of the United States are intended to reduce the overuse of its currency processing services by depository institutions (banks). These changes are expected to have a significant impact on operating policies at...

We consider the problem of optimally allocating contiguous rectangular presentation spaces in order to maximize revenues. Such problems are encountered in the arrangement of products in retail shelf-space and in the design of feature advertising displays or webpages. Specifically, we allow (i)...

A great deal of work has been done to analyze the problem of robot move sequencing and part scheduling in robotic flowshop cells. We examine the recent developments in this literature. A robotic flowshop cell consists of a number of processing stages served by one or more robots. Each stage has...

We study conflict and cooperation issues arising in a supply chain where a manufacturer makes products which are shipped to customers by a distributor. The manufacturer and the distributor each has an ideal schedule, determined by cost and capacity considerations. However, these two schedules...

We consider the problem of scheduling operations in bufferless robotic cells that produce identical parts using either single-gripper or dual-gripper robots. The objective is to find a cyclic sequence of robot moves that minimizes the long-run average time to produce a part or, equivalently,...

Constant travel-time robotic cells with a single gripper robot and with one or more machines at each processing stage have been studied in the literature. By contrast, cells with a dual gripper robot, although more productive, have so far received scant attention, perhaps due to their inherent...

Interval robotic cells with several processing stages (chambers) have been increasingly used for diverse wafer fabrication processes in semi-conductor manufacturing. Processes such as low-pressure chemical vapor deposition, etching, cleaning and chemical-mechanical planarization, require strict...