Recent research studies of job shop scheduling have begun to examine the interaction between sequencing priorities and the method of assigning due-dates. This paper surveys the tactical aspects of this interaction, focusing primarily on average tardiness as a measure of scheduling effectiveness....

We consider the situation of a single item having a deterministic, time-varying demand pattern. Production lot sizes, so as to minimize the total of setup and carrying costs, are to be determined subject to production capacity restrictions that can vary with time. Two important theorems...

We develop and test an optimization model for maximizing response rates for online marketing research survey panels. The model consists of (1) a decision tree predictive model that classifies panelists into "states" and forecasts the response rate for panelists in each state and (2) a linear...

We examine the problem of scheduling days off in continuous (seven-day-a-week) operations under a variety of day-off policies, when demand for manpower is N on weekdays and n on weekend days. We consider a number of policies governing employee work assignments and in each case we give a formula...

Based on theoretical arguments and empirical evidence we advocate the use of the lognormal distribution as a model for activity times. However, raw data on activity times are often subject to rounding and to the Parkinson effect. We address those factors in our statistical tests by using a...