When faced with protecting a three-point lead in the waning seconds of a basketball game, which is a preferable strategy: playing defense or fouling the offense before they can attempt a game-tying shot? Gonzaga University head coach, Mark Few, was faced with such a decision against Michigan State in the semi-finals of the Maui Invitational (November 22, 2005) and elected to play defense. The s...

In many production systems, capacities depend not only on machine capacities, but also on the available work-force levels in each period of the planning horizon. Therefore, these capacities are given in terms of labor hours. In order to develop aggregate plans, work-force levels should be established "rst, and then translated into available regular-time and overtime production capacities. In th...

'No-shows' or missed appointments result in under-utilized clinic capacity. We develop a logistic regression model using electronic medical records to estimate patients' no-show probabilities and illustrate the use of the estimates in creating clinic schedules that maximize clinic capacity utilization while maintaining small patient waiting times and clinic overtime costs. This study used infor...

Encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis (EPS) is a rare but very severe complication of long-term peritoneal dialysis (PD). Since the first reports on this disease in the eighties, several imaging techniques have been used for its diagnosis. Because of the rarity of this condition, uniformity in modality and protocols for abdominal imaging for diagnosis has been lacking overtime. Nowadays, computed ...

The number of new nurses entering the profession has increased, but the need to retain nurses in the profession continues to be a critical priority. The consequences of the nursing shortage are reflected in continued high levels of overtime, absenteeism and turnover. The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU), in partnership with the Canadian Nurses Association, the Canadian Healthcare Ass...

Understanding what drives narrative appeal is a major focus of entertainment research. Disposition theory proposes that appeal is a function of the dispositions viewers hold towards characters, which are in turn driven by viewer perceptions of character morality and outcomes experienced by characters. However, the manner in which dispositions change overtime has not been extensively researched....

In this paper, we study a Capacitated Lot Sizing Problem with Stochastic Setup Times (CLSP-SST).We describe a mathematical model that considers both regular costs (including production, setup and inventory holding costs) and expected overtime costs (related to the excess usage of capacity). The CLSP-SST is formulated as a two-stage stochastic programming problem. A procedure is proposed to effe...

We consider a single-item, periodic review inventory control problem where discrete stochastic demand must be satisfied. When shortages occur, the unmet demand must be filled by some form of expediting. We allow a very general form for the cost structure of expediting, including the special case of lost sales. Examples of expediting are overtime production, where production is allowed above and...