This paper considers the problem of constructing order batches for distribution centers using a data mining technique. With the advent of supply chain management, distribution centers fulfill a strategic role of achieving the logistics objectives of shorter cycle times, lower inventories, lower costs and better customer service. Many companies consider both their cost effectiveness and market p...

In a video-on-demand (VOD) environment, batch-ing of requests is often applied to reduce the I/O demand and increase the availability of VOD services. This scheme, however, unfairly forces rst comers to wait for subscribers arriving late at the batch. Some of these victims may become impatient and decide to renege. To address this issue, we introduce a chaining technique which allows a client s...

The rounding of orders to achieve a batch size is recognised as a source of the bullwhip problem within supply chains. While it is often advocated that batch sizes should be reduced as much as possible, there has been limited investigation into the impact of batching on bullwhip. Here we consider scenarios where orders are placed only in multiples of a fixed batch size, for both deterministic a...

Both software-initiated and hardware-initiated prefetching have been used to accelerate shared-memory server performance. While software-initiated prefetching require instruction set and compiler support, hardware prefetching often require additional hardware structures or extra memory state. The coherence batching scheme proposed in this paper keeps the system completely binary transparent and...

In this paper, we propose and evaluate the performance of a multicast technique, called controlled CIWP, for supplying video-on-demand services. Similar to batching schemes, controlled CIWP allows two clients that request the same video to share a channel. Unlike batching, the controlled CIWP scheme does not delay the earlier request in order to promote sharing. Instead, sharing is ensured by p...

In this note we consider a new problem, the so-called bin-batching problem related to variablesized bin covering. A best possible on-line algorithm is presented. ? 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.