Most of the recent studies of heuristic lot-sizing techniques for multi-stage material requirements planning systems have investigated the problem in the context of a single stage. In this paper, the multi-stage problem is first modeled analytically to indicate the potential errors inherent in...

Previous work dealt with the problems of nervousness in Material Requirements Planning (MRP) Systems when production schedules were modified to include setups which previously had not been scheduled. In this work we further examine nervousness and its cost. By modifying the setup costs used in...

The Wagner-Whitin dynamic economic lot-sizing technique has not been widely applied to real-world production scheduling problems. A frequently quoted reason is the extreme sensitivity of the solution to changes in the estimates of future values of the problem's parameters, especially future...

This paper describes the development of an operations management model and its implementation in a simulation mode in order to study the effects of alternative organizational designs and person/work assignment criteria on the utilization of the technological and human resources of a firm. The...

We consider the problem of controlling a single-server queue by turning the server on and off. In addition to a Poisson arrival process and general service-time distribution, provisions for balking and reneging are included in the models, yielding a variety of applications. Stationary optimal...

Planning horizons are developed for the dynamic economic lot site model with backlogging when the marginal production cost is either constant or variable. The inventory holding and backlogging cost functions are assumed to be concave. An efficient forward algorithm generalizes the...

Manufacturers and their distributors must cope with an increased flow of returned products from their customers. The value of commercial product returns, which we define as products returned for any reason within 90 days of sale, now exceeds $100 billion annually in the United States. Although...