Observations of freeway traffic flow are usually quite scattered about an underlying curve when plotted versus density or occupancy. Although increasing the sampling intervals can reduce the scatter, whenever an experiment encompasses a rush hour with transitions in and out of congestion, some...

It is shown that all the phase transitions in and out of freely flowing traffic reported earlier for a German site could be caused by bottlenecks, as are all the transitions observed at two other sites examined here. Furthermore, all the evidence indicates that bottlenecks cause these...

This paper presents a simple representation of traffic on a highway with a single entrance and exit. The representation can be used to predict traffic's evolution over time and space, including transient phenomena such as the building, propagation and dissipation of queues. The easy-to-solve...

This paper addresses the problem of an unacceptably high rate of abandoned calls at a centralisedservice desk of a South African telecommunications company. It uses a queuing methodology todesign a system that may achieve the desired performance level. A quality standard is created bydetermining...

This thesis focuses on increasing the efficiency of systems with cross-trained workforce and finite storage spaces. Our objective is to maximize the throughput and minimize the setup costs (if they exist). More specifically, we are interested in determining effective cross-training strategies...

This dissertation deals with three problems in health care. In the first, we consider the incentives to change prices and capital levels at hospitals, using optimal control under the assumption that private payers charge higher prices if patients consume more hospital services. The main results...

Clustering parts and machines into part families and machine cells is a major decision in the design of cellular manufacturing systems which is defined as cell formation. This paper presents a non-linear mixed integer programming model to design cellular manufacturing systems which assumes that...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework and prototype software to use IDEF3 descriptions as a knowledge base from which a queuing network (QN) analysis is performed to compute system performance measures as part of quick response manufacturing. This intends to help domain...

Spreadsheet software is now widely used as a decision‐making tool, owing to the simplicity and ease with which generalists can analyse and obtain fast and precise information. Through spreadsheet programs, a on‐specialist can conduct an exhaustive “what if” search in order to make...