A robotic cell - manufacturing system widely used in industry - contains two or more robot-served machines, repetitively producing a number of part types. In this paper, we consider scheduling of operations in a bufferless dual-gripper robotic cell processing multiple part types. The processing...

We discuss the performance of scheduling algorithms for a certain kind of manufacturing environment, called the "Flexible Flowshop", which consists of a certain number of machine centers. Each center has one or more identical parallel machines. Each part is processed by at most one machine in...

We consider the problem of scheduling operations in bufferless robotic cells that produce identical parts. The objective is to find a cyclic sequence of robot moves that minimizes the long-run average time to produce a part or, equivalently, maximizes the throughput rate. The robot can be moved...

We consider a supply chain planning problem via efficient cross-docking for oilfield services industry. The problem is motivated from a major oilfield services company in North America. In a typical supply chain setup of this industry, the companies ship raw materials to an international...

This paper considers the problem of scheduling operations in bufferless robotic cells that produce identical parts. Finding a cyclic solution that minimizes the long-run average time to produce a part has long been a fundamental open problem. Most research has been focused on finding an optimal...

The issue of allocating capacity to accommodate emergent surgery cases while scheduling elective patients has major policy implications for Level-1 trauma centers including most large academic medical centers. This is because operating rooms (ORs) are the greatest source of revenues for...

The performance of a retail store depends on its ability to attract customer traffic, match labor with incoming traffic, and convert the incoming traffic into sales. Retailers make significant investments in marketing activities (such as advertising to bring customers into their stores) and in...

The Federal Reserve System of the United States is making changes to its cash recirculation policy to reduce depository institutions' (banks') overuse of its cash processing services. These changes will affect operating policies and costs at many institutions having large cash businesses and, in...

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)...

Identification of competitive healthcare providers is an important issue for successful operation of a bundled payment reimbursement program. We develop a healthcare provider selection framework via data envelopment analysis (DEA) and combinatorial auction (CA). Our goal is to cover target...