Uncertain demand combined with a positive lead time for adding capacity creates the risk of capacity shortage during the lead time. Accurate shortage estimation is very important to determine a capacity expansion policy. In this paper, we investigate four kinds of option pricing methods to estimate the shortage during a fixed lead time under the assumption of an exponential trend for demand gro...

In this paper, we develop approximations that yield insight into the joint optimization of capacity and inventory, and how the optimal inventory policy varies with capacity investment in a single-product, single-station, make-to-stock manufacturing system in which inventory is managed through a base-stock policy. We allow for a correlated demand stream as we analyze our models in an asymptotic ...

BACKGROUND There is a continuing need for research capacity building initiatives for primary health care professionals. Historically strategies have focused on interventions aimed at individuals but more recently theoretical frameworks have proposed team-based approaches. Few studies have evaluated these new approaches. This study aims to evaluate a team-based approach to research capacity buil...

BACKGROUND Health policy and systems research and analysis (HPSR+A) has been noted as central to health systems strengthening, yet the capacity for HPSR+A is limited in low- and middle-income countries. Building the capacity of African institutions, rather than relying on training provided in northern countries, is a more sustainable way of building the field in the continent. Recognising that ...

Emulation of Output Queuing (OQ) switches using Combined Input-Output Queuing (CIOQ) switches has been studied extensively in the setting where the switch buffers have unlimited capacity. In this paper we study the general setting where the OQ switch and the CIOQ switch have finite buffer capacity B ≥ 1 packets at every output. We analyze the resource requirements of CIOQ policies in terms of t...

For high-value workforces in service organizations such as call centres, scheduling rules rely increasingly on queueing system models to achieve optimal performance. Most of these models assume a homogeneous population of servers, or at least a static service capacity per service agent. In this work we examine the challenge posed by dynamically fluctuating service capacity, where servers may in...

In this paper we evaluate the sustainability of the current fiscal policy regime in Poland, which has been in place for almost 10 years since the start of the economic reform process. We use the intertemporal budget constraint (IBC) as a framework, and evaluate the sustainability of current policies. Consistency of fiscal policy with the IBC is evaluated using unit root and cointegration tests....

Local governments attempting to respond to environmental change face an array of challenges. To better understand policy responses and factors influencing local government capacity to respond to environmental change, we studied three environmental issues affecting rural or peri-urban towns in different regions of New York State: climate change in the Adirondacks (n = 63 towns), loss of open spa...

The combination of uncertain demand and lead times for installing capacity creates the risk of shortage during the lead time, which may have serious consequences for a service provider with dependent customers. This paper analyzes a model of capacity expansion with correlated random demand and a fixed lead time for adding capacity. We develop and prove the form of an optimal policy for expansio...

Network quality of service is traditionally thought to be provided by a combination of scheduling in the network nodes to enforce a capacity sharing policy and traffic controls to prevent congestion that could annihilate that policy. The work presented herein is instead based on an end-to-end argument: A capacity sharing policy is enforced by traffic controls in the hosts at the edges of the ne...