Showing papers by "Aalto University published in 1984"

On the optimality of the shortest line discipline

Abstract: We consider a many server queueing system with identical exponential servers. Customers arrive according to an arbitrary arrival process and upon arrival the customer must be assigned to some server's queue. We show that the shortest line discipline is the best decision rule when assigning the customers to the servers in the sense that the corresponding departure process is stochastically fastest.

The Management and Power Structure of Chinese Enterprises during and after the Cultural Revolution; with Empirical Data Comparing Chinese and European Enterprises

Abstract: During the history of Communist China, the management and structure of enterprises have undergone great changes, reaching their culmination during the Cultural Revolution and afterwards under the new administration which followed the late Chairman Mao-Zedong. The main shifts in recent years have been: from the use of ideology in guiding organizations towards the use of economic rewards; a move towards decentralization of enterprise management; and one towards a limited free market system in the economy.The paper is divided into two main parts. First we analyse the development of the power structure in Chinese enterprises since the Cultural Revolution, and in the second part we study how the changes in the power structure appear in the influence of different interest groups in decision making at the end of 1980, comparing the results of the IDE study of European enterprises with interview and personally administered questionnaire data collected in China. On the whole, European personnel appear to exercise ...

On the optimal policies of an exponential machine repair problem

Abstract: We consider an exponential repair model with s machines and one repairman. The machines' failure rates are equal but the repair rate may change from machine to machine. The repairman repairs the failed machines one at a time and in the course of his work he may even interrupt repairing one machine and start another. We compare repair policies and prove an optimality result by means of stochastic order. The proof is based on representing the compared models simultaneously in a special way and comparing then the sample paths of the interesting stochastic processes.

Conditional Versus Joint Probability Assessments

Abstract: The assessment of conditional and / or joint probabilities of events that constitute scenarios is necessary for sound planning, forecasting, and decision making. The assessment process is complex and subtle, and various difficulties are encountered in the elicitation of such probabilities such as, implicit violations ofthe probability calculus and some meaningfjilness conditions. The necessary and sufficient as well as meaningfulness conditions that the elicited information on conditional and joint probabilities must satisfy are evaluated against actual assessments empirically. A high frequency of violation of these conditions was observed in assessing both conditional and joint probabilities. The consistency of the assessments is affected by factors such as the causal / diagnostic and positive / negative relationship of the events. Use of a joint probability table as a judgmental aid can significantly reduce the number of inconsistent conditional as well as joint probability assessments. The impl...