We analyze a decentralized assembly system with two types of component suppliers: one (commanding suppliers) has strong bargaining power who demands a wholesale price contract and the other (subordinate suppliers) has weak bargaining power who accepts a revenue sharing contract from the...

Balancing supply and demand for a dockless bike-sharing system is difficult as users are allowed to pick up and return bikes anywhere within a large service area. One strategy to help manage the amount of dockless bikes scattered within a service area is to offer monetary rewards for users who...

This paper studies the problem of scheduling jobs on parallel machines with setup times. When a machine switches from processing one type of job to another type, setup times are incurred. The problem is to find a feasible schedule for each machine which maximizes the total reward. We study three...

This investigation considers certain issues regarding the optimal design of unpaced production lines with variable processing times. Under certain assumptions, including an equal allocation of buffer storage space between the respective pairs of stations, it is known that the optimal allocation...

Tackling the steep increase in drug costs is an especially important issue among many health care providers and insurers. To entice the clinics to become more cost efficient, the U.S. federal government, as well as many HMOs, have developed various cost containment initiatives recently. However,...