A single station service system with bounded queue capacity operates in discrete time, and at each period, one out of K possible service rates is used. A subclass of the stationary nonrandomized policies--termed relevant--which uses only a subset of the available service rates, is proved optimal...

Consider a single station service system with bounded queue capacity and two possible types of service ("fast" and "slow"), operating in discrete time. It is proved that in the search for an optimal policy one need not consider policies hat prescribe one type of service when the system is...

When two value estimates are about equally likely, conservatism dictates reporting the less optimistic one (e.g. Lower of Cost or Market). We use an analytical model to investigate informational implications of this dictum, and identify types of environments where the conservative accounting...

The precise costs of operating a stationary finite Markov system are assumed undefined. It is only known that the cost of failure is orders of magnitude higher than the cost of replacement, and that all other costs are relatively negligible. The problem considered is the maximisation of the...