This book provides an introduction to the Monte Carlo method suitable for a one-or two-semester course for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in the mathematical and engineering sciences. It also can serve as a reference for the professional analyst. In the past, my inability to provide students with a single- source book on this topic for class and for later professional reference had left me repeatedly frustrated, and eventually motivated me to write this book. In addition to focused accounts of major topics, the book has two unifying themes: One concerns the effective use of...

Facility location applications are concerned with the location of one or more facilities in a way that optimizes a certain objective such as mini- mizing transportation cost, providing equitable service to customers, cap- turing the largest market share, etc. Facility location problems give rise to challenging geometrical and combinatorial problems. The research on facility location problems spans many research fields such as operations re- search/management science, industrial engineering, geography, economics, computer science, mathematics, marketing, electrical engineering, urban planning,...

One of the most important tasks faced by decision-makers in business and government is that of selection. Selection problems are challenging in that they require the balancing of multiple, often conflicting, criteria. In recent years, a number of interesting decision aids have become available to assist in such decisions.
The aim of this book is to provide a comparative survey of many of the decision aids currently available. The first chapters present general ideas which underpin the methodologies used to design these aids. Subsequent chapters then focus on specific decision aids and...

Manufacturing industries are devoted to producing high-quality products in the most economical and timely manner. Quality, economics, and time not only indicate the customer-satisfaction level, but also measure the manufacturing per formance of a company. Today's manufacturing environments are becoming more and more complex, flexible, and information-intensive. Companies invest into the information technologies such as computers, communication networks, sensors, actuators, and other equipment that give them an abundance of information about their materials and resources. In the face of global...

Discrete-event simulation consists of a collection of techniques that when applied to a discrete-event dynamical system, generates sequences called sample paths that characterize its behavior. The collection includes modeling concepts for abstracting the essential features of a system, using specially designed software for converting these relationships into computer executable code capable of generating the requisite sample-path data; outlining procedures for converting these data into estimates of systems performances; and then illustrating methods for assessing how well these estimates...

Written by a leading researcher this book presents an introduction to Stochastic Petri Nets covering the modeling power of the proposed SPN model, the stability conditions and the simulation methods. Its unique and well-written approach provides a timely and important addition to the literature. Appeals to a wide range of researchers in engineering, computer science, mathematics and OR.

This book aims to address the coordination of quality control with other aspects of a firm's production system and supply chain, specifically, the coordination between the inspection-repair of finished products and their follow-up services, between inspection and process revision, between production and inspection under capacity constraints, between replenishment and rework quantities, and between supply and substitution decisions. To address these issues, the authors have in recent years developed a set of dynamic approaches based on Markov decision programming and using stochastic...

Everyday life bears a multitude of location problems and locational de- sions. These may be as simple as how best to place a pencil on a desk without having to reach too far and still keeping the work space clear, up to the question of where to place the next out of hundreds of thousands of transistors on a microchip. Some of these questions have easy answers, while others are so complex that not even satisfactory solutions are ava- able, never mind asking for optimized placement. The scales of problems reach from microchip design up to global trade and may demand consid- ation of one, two,...

The ?nite-dimensional nonlinear complementarity problem (NCP) is a s- tem of ?nitely many nonlinear inequalities in ?nitely many nonnegative variables along with a special equation that expresses the complementary relationship between the variables and corresponding inequalities. This complementarity condition is the key feature distinguishing the NCP from a general inequality system, lies at the heart of all constrained optimi- tion problems in ?nite dimensions, provides a powerful framework for the modeling of equilibria of many kinds, and exhibits a natural link between smooth and...

The ?nite-dimensional nonlinear complementarity problem (NCP) is a s- tem of ?nitely many nonlinear inequalities in ?nitely many nonnegative variables along with a special equation that expresses the complementary relationship between the variables and corresponding inequalities. This complementarity condition is the key feature distinguishing the NCP from a general inequality system, lies at the heart of all constrained optimi- tion problems in ?nite dimensions, provides a powerful framework for the modeling of equilibria of many kinds, and exhibits a natural link between smooth and...