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This paper considers choosing between different forms of fixed price incentive contracts. The analysis assumes the underlying probability density function for project costs is triangular. The methods of evaluation considered are expected value, certainly equivalence and stochastic dominance. The latter two methods take into account the typical risk aversion of contractors and clients. The analytical...
This article reports on the influence of product complexity on the purchasing structure within selected product types and phases of the purchasing process by using Analysis of Variance on data from Greek manufacturing and utility enterprises. Our study examined the influence of product complexity on four parameters of purchasing structure, across two different product types and four phases of the...
Earlier research led to the development of a microcomputer based generic package to support production management decisions for the smaller manufacturing enterprise (SME). This was developed using a fourth generation language (4GL), supported by a relational database. It was designed in such a way that it met the majority of the needs of the SME for production planning and control and could readily...
Despite the increasing ratio of fixed cost in the operating cost of production systems, variable cost oriented decision support methods prevail. These methods, however, have several unexploited capabilities to consider period costs as well. This paper shows how sensitivity analysis of the optimum solution of a linear programming model can provide overhead oriented information as well. The analysis...
We consider the effect on profitability of using increasingly sophisticated regression-based methods of estimating and interpreting the parameters of the demand curve facing the neoclassical firm that newly enters an existing product market. Through simulation it is shown that in this particular setting the differences in the firm's subsequent profit performance over the range of the different methods...
The benefits and impact of new manufacturing technology have been documented extensively in the literature. Management of the maintenance function is receiving more attention in the trade journals, but limited studies have been published in the academic literature. This study (following the general approach adopted by Meredith in an earlier paper) considers the implementation of the reliability-centred...
The standard goal programming model only allows linear continuous preference functions to be modelled. In this paper methods for formulating other possible preference structures, such as discontinuities and varying penalty levels dependent on the distance from the goals are proposed. Techniques for ensuring minimal model growth and ease of solution are discussed. An example to illustrate these methods...
Certain management decision problems are not often easily modeled using traditional decision-making frameworks. Complex management decision problems may possess characteristics that are difficult to describe fully with any single decision-making framework such as a decision tree or a network model. A Petri Net is a powerful and a highly versatile modeling tool that possesses meta-model capability...
A periodic-review, random-demand inventory model is analyzed under the assumption that replenishment quantities are random fractions of the amounts ordered. Results of a previous study of a single-period model are generalized to form an easily computed heuristic adaptation of the (s, S) policy for use in this environment. The heuristic is based on the simple practice of scaling down pipeline inventories...
Graph-theoretic constructs are widely used in the modeling and analysis of systems. However, most existing constructs are not suitable for the analysis of systems where relationships between sets of elements have to be represented and manipulated. Such relationships occur commonly in the specification of modules in information systems and decision support systems. In this paper, we describe a new...
This paper addresses a problem involving a principal and a potentially large number of agents , in which the principal requires some rule which will ensure that agents are rewarded according to their effort. When the resources available make it impossible for the principal to monitor each agent's performance, it is desirable to ensure that any rule which is applied will encourage truthful...
A scheduling method for a single machine scheduling problem with sequence dependent setup times is presented where similar products produced on the machine can be partitioned into families. A two-stage traveling salesman heuristic procedure is developed. In the first stage an n n symmetric setup time matrix is generated for n products and the products are classified into families (groups) using...
Research in human information processing demonstrates that the presence of irrelevant information has an adverse effect on the quality of decisions. Decision makers are unable to identify and separate the effect of irrelevant information, thereby reducing the quality of decisions. The propensity to overutilize irrelevant information is significant because present day work environments are increasingly...
In any situation of fixed capacity and a perishable service or product, firms want to avoid spoilage of the service or product and receive the most revenue possible in the face of uncertain demand. Stimulation of demand from price-sensitive customers, however, through discount prices to customers that reserve early can help fill capacity. This is attractive if non-price-sensitive customers can be...
For years many researchers and practitioners have been calling for a more boundary-spanning or cross-functional view of the management of businesses. As any student of optimization will note, the combination of several optimized sub-systems will rarely, if ever, result in a globally optimized system. It is much the same with a business. Decisions that may appear extremely good within the confines...
Decision support systems (DSS) have been an active area of research and application for more than 20 years. The role and benefits of DSS are widely recognized today around the world. Drawing from diverse, reported (success and failure) stories of DSS deployment, we develop an agenda for driving DSS research and development (R & D) into the next century. The guiding philosophy in the agenda...
The delivery of health services represents one of the most daunting challenges confronting contemporary management. The complexity of the issues involved suggests that health service policy makers seeking to allocate scarce resources would find the opportunities offered by large scale modelling attractive. However, the application of such models to strategic management of the health services has...
This paper presents a new technique for helping managers to talk through and develop their view of difficult and complex issues, which are given expression by arranging a collection of objects, some of them symbolically rich, in an arrangement or sculpture . At the same time, the managers describe and develop the meanings being given to, and the relationships between, the objects. The technique...
Traditionally, raising the level of technology is considered the most effective way to improve productivity. Nevertheless, without the support of sound management systems, the contribution of technology to productivity is limited. In a sample of fifteen machinery firms, this paper calculates three indices for automation technology, production management, and productivity, respectively, to represent...
A model of repeated choices is presented where the current choices of an agent are affected by the decisions taken by the others in the past. Whereas in the single choice framework positive feedback leads to non-ergodicity, positive feedback in the repeated choice model generally leads to ergodic processes. Non-ergodicity is obtained only for very special cases.
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