We consider the production/inventory control for a recoverable system with stochastic demand and returns where stock is replenished by manufacturing new items or remanufacturing returned items. The optimal control policy found by solving a Markov decision process (MDP) for a given problem...

ILO pub. Working paper, comparison of decision making process in foreign enterprise subsidiarys of American and Japanese multinational enterprise located in the UK - contrasts the role of USA management attitudes in the 1950s with role of Japanese industrial management in the 1980s; covers...

The specifics of process manufacturing have a great influence on production management. The focus of process-production control is to maintain stable and cost-effective production within given constraints. The synthesis of production-control structures is thus recognized as one of the most...

The contribution of new technologies to economic growth is harnessed only when new technologies are widely diffused in the economy. Diffusion results from a series of individual decisions to introduce the new technologies, decisions being the result of a comparison of the uncertain benefits and...

The specifics of process manufacturing have a great influence on production management. The focus of process-production control is to maintain stable and cost-effective production within given constraints. The synthesis of production-control structures is thus recognized as one of the most...

We address the procurement of new components for recyclable products in the context of Kodak's single-use camera. The objective is to find an ordering policy that minimizes the total expected procurement, inventory holding, and lost sales cost. Distinguishing characteristics of the system are...

An ongoing production process produces defective parts at random intervals. Each defective part provides a learning opportunity which the decision maker may use to improve the process by investing resources to identify and remove the causes of the defective. For various cost criteria, it is...

We consider the situation of a supplier plant whose customer plants desire just-in-time (JIT) deliveries. Randomness in both the production and demand processes make satisfying every demand that might occur in true JIT fashion impossible. Therefore, supplier plants typically negotiate bounds on...

This paper presents a brief overview of semiconductor manufacturing followed by the results of a panel session held at the Fourth International Conference on Modeling and Analysis of Semiconductor Manufacturing (MASM) in Miami, December 10, 2008 on the role of modelling and analysis in...

In this paper, we propose to discuss profitability conditions of a subcontracting constraint for subcontractor companies. The subcontracting imposes unavailability periods of the production unit in order to periodically perform subcontracting tasks (ST). We study the subcontracting constraint...