摘要:

AbstractA recent project aimed to find ways of improving the effectiveness of the House of Commons in scrutinizing government policy, and hence holding Ministers to account. The study identified some interlocking obstacles to effective scrutiny, and made a set of proposals for overcoming them, involving both the provision of information and analysis to MPs and reform of procedures. It was influenced by lessons from within OR about the effective provision and use of analysis, and this paper reflects further on what an OR perspective can offer in this area, and on developments subsequent to the original study.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.196

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractIn this paper, we consider a real-life vehicle routeing problem that occurs in a major Swiss company producing pet food and flour. In contrast with usual hypothetical problems, a large variety of restrictions has to be considered. The main constraints are relative to the accessibility and the time windows at customers, the carrying capacities of vehicles, the total duration of routes and the drivers' breaks. To find good solutions to this problem, we propose two heuristic methods: a fast straightforward insertion procedure and a method based on tabu search techniques. Next, the produced solutions are compared with the routes actually covered by the company. Our outcomes indicate that the total distance travelled can be reduced significantly when such methods are used.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.197

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractThe educational process is characterized by multiple outcomes such as the achievement of academic results of various standards and non-academic achievements. This paper shows how data envelopment analysis (DEA) can be used to guide secondary schools to improved performance through role-model identification and target setting in a way that recognizes the multi-outcome nature of the education process and reflects the relative desirability of improving individual outcomes. The approach presented in the paper draws from a DEA-based assessment of the schools of a local education authority carried out by the authors. Data from that assessment are used to illustrate the approach presented in the paper.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.198

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractA multivariate approach to contract bidding strategies in the construction industry is presented. This represents a radical departure from previous work in the field by using all available data on competing bidders.‘Optimal’,‘no loss’and‘break even’mark-up strategies are derived and methods of parameter estimation proposed. A case study shows how the three strategic mark-up values are calculated against known competitors.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.199

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractFollowing promising results in test markets and successful pilot-scale manufacturing, the Board of a major Canadian manufacturer took the decision to proceed to develop the design for a full-scale production plant for a new advanced-technology product. The success of this new product was seen as critical to the Company's future, but Company personnel had limited experience with the new production technology and with the design of plants of this large scale. Finally, competitors from the USA and Europe were known to be working on similar products resulting in a sense of urgency in getting the product to the marketplace. A visual interactive decision support system built around a simulation model was developed using a methodology designed to help management understand the plant design issues and to help them resolve various key plant design options. When completed, the model gave management a tool which was used to analyse alternative plant designs and different production and manpower scheduling scenarios under a broad range of production conditions. The intensity of worldwide competition in this new product market, and the critical importance of this product to this Canadian corporation, have led to the decision to omit the name of the corporation from this article. In addition, certain production details have been disguised.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.200

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractThe optimum assignment of structural steel shapes to rail cars is an important logistical problem in the steel industry. In this paper, we discuss an application at Bethlehem Steel that not only involves weight and dimensional constraints, but also customer unloading constraints. The formulation is a generalized bin packing problem which is solved by modifying and extending the first fit decreasing algorithm. The solution algorithm, SOLID (for Structural Optimal Loading IDentification), has been used extensively for one of Bethlehem's high tonnage customers providing very good practical (implementable) results that achieve the desired goals. Bethlehem has enhanced this approach for use with other customers.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.201

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractThe object of inquiry in this paper is all organisation-based M.Sc. student projects of two consecutive years, using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), undertaken as part of the course requirements at Lancaster University. This paper reports on a survey of 25 projects conducted by the group who originally developed SSM. No questionnaire that would trigger replies was used; rather, attending the students' project presentations at Lancaster after about four months in their client organisations brought to the fore those themes that the 45 users themselves deemed relevant during their use of SSM on the projects. This paper describes, discusses and analyses those themes, and relates them to each other. Reference to previous surveys is made and the consequences of the results presented are discussed.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.202

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractThe objective of this study is to use the simulated annealing method to solve minisum location-allocation problems with rectilinear distances. The major advantage of the simulated annealing method is that it is a very general and efficient algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems with know objective functions. In this study, a simulated annealing algorithm was developed to solve the location-allocation problems, and its performance was compared with two other popular methods for solving location-allocation problems. The results show that simulated annealing is a good alternative to the two methods, as measured by both the solution quality and the computational time.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.203

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractA two-stage distribution planning problem, in which customers are to be served with different commodities from a number of plants, through a number of intermediate warehouses is addressed. The possible locations for the warehouses are given. For each location, there is an associated fixed cost for opening the warehouse concerned, as well as an operating cost and a maximum capacity. The demand of each customer for each commodity is known, as are the shipping costs from a plant to a possible warehouse and thereafter to a customer. It is required to choose the locations for opening warehouses and to find the shipping schedule such that the total cost is minimized. The problem is modelled as a mixed-integer programming problem and solved by branch and bound. The lower bounds are calculated through solving a minimum-cost, multicommodity network flow problem with capacity constraints. Results of extensive computational experiments are given.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.204

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

AbstractIn most of the approaches to the Multiobjective Stochastic Linear Programming problem that have been proposed in the literature, the notion of quality of a solution is not adequately defined. We reconsider this problem from a decision point of view, in contexts where either the decision maker's preference structure cannot be described by a utility function, or where this structure is expressed by an unknown non-decreasing utility function and the probability distribution of the random parameters is unknown. We define a fundamental set of‘pointwise admissible’solutions, as well as several subsets of particular interest. We discuss the relevance of these various pointwise efficient sets, their interrelations, and their practical identification.

ISSN:0160-5682    

DOI:10.1057/jors.1994.205

出版商:Taylor&Francis    

年代:1994

数据来源: Taylor