Simultaneous Optimization Of Flow Control And Scheduling In Single Server Queues

"This thesis deals with dynamic control of multi-class single-server queues. In a broad class of such systems, fixed-priority rules, although static, have been shown to be optimal among dynamic schedules. This result however rests on the independence between the order of service and the pattern of arrivals, an assumption which is violated when flow control is exercised. We seek to characterize the optimal scheduling in the presence of flow control, when both scheduling and flow control are optimized jointly." --

This book is dedicated to Jinhua Cao on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Jinhua Cao is one of the most famous reliability theorists. His main contributions include: published over 100 influential scientific papers; published an interesting reliability book in Chinese in 1986, which has greatly influenced the reliability of education, academic research and engineering applications in China; initiated and organized Reliability Professional Society of China (the first part of Operations Research Society of China) since 1981. The high admiration that Professor Cao enjoys in the reliability community all over the world was witnessed by the enthusiastic response of each contributor in this book. The contributors are leading researchers with diverse research perspectives. The research areas of the book iclude a broad range of topics related to reliability models, queueing theory, manufacturing systems, supply chain finance, risk management, Markov decision processes, blockchain and so forth. The book consists of a brief Preface describing the main achievements of Professor Cao; followed by congratulations from Professors Way Kuo and Wei Wayne Li, and by Operations Research Society of China, and Reliability Professional Society of China; and further followed by 25 articles roughly grouped together. Most of the articles are written in a style understandable to a wide audience. This book is useful to anyone interested in recent developments in reliability, network security, system safety, and their stochastic modeling and analysis.

This book deals with dynamic and stochastic methods for multi-project planning. Based on the idea of using queueing networks for the analysis of dynamic-stochastic multi-project environments this book addresses two problems: detailed scheduling of project activities, and integrated order acceptance and capacity planning. In an extensive simulation study, the book thoroughly investigates existing scheduling policies. To obtain optimal and near optimal scheduling policies new models and algorithms are proposed based on the theory of Markov decision processes and Approximate Dynamic programming. Then the book presents a new model for the effective computation of optimal policies based on a Markov decision process. Finally, the book provides insights into the structure of optimal policies.

From foundations to state-of-the-art; the tools and philosophy you need to build network models.