Jonathan Eckstein's Advanced Operations Management Class 33:623:400 (Fall 2006)

This page is for my Fall 2006 class. Click here for my Fall 2005 class.

Announcements (As of February 27, 2007 09:45 PM)

It's over! You can retrieve your final exam and overall course grades from the SAS gradebook system. Course grades should also appear on the Rutgers official grade website by 6 AM, December 21.
- The take-home final turned out to be difficult. I do not want to post specifics of the solutions yet, because one student has an extension due to a death in the family. I will be happy to discuss the exam with you after break.
- I am badly in need of some "downtime", so if you would like to discuss the exam or your grade, please contact me after the break. I may not respond to any grade-related e-mails until after the holidays.

Usual Office Hour Schedule

My office for meeting undergraduate students is in the J. H. Levin building, room 255. My regular office hours for Fall 2006 are:

Tuesdays 1:30-3:30 PM
Thursdays 1:30-3:30 PM
Or other times by appointment.

Handouts and Class Materials

To read PDF files, you may use Adobe Reader. All homework assignments and solutions are in PDF format.

Tuesday, September 5: Introduction, calculus review, simple nonlinear models
- Syllabus
- Tentative class schedule
- PRICING.XLS: spreadsheet for nonlinear pricing model
Thursday, September 7: Basic EOQ modeling and lead times
- Graph showing "flatness" of EOQ objective function near optimal value q*
- Homework 1, due September 14
Tuesday, September 12: EOQ with quantity discounts
Thursday, September 14: EOQ with progressive quantity discounts, EOQ with discounting
- Spreadsheet illustrating "progressive" quantity discount pricing
- Graphing spreadsheet for average cost/EOQ versus present value
- Solver spreadsheet for present value optimization with quantity discounts
- Homework 2, due September 21
Tuesday, September 19: Continuous production EOQ, backorder EOQ
- Solution to homework 1
Thursday, September 21: Introduction to decision trees
- Homework 3, due September 28
Tuesday, September 26: Decision trees, basic probability theory, and Bayes' formula
Thursday, September 28: More decision tree and Bayes problems, non-EMV considerations
- A Bayesian decision problem with three "states of the world"
- Homework 4, due October 5
Tuesday, October 3: Merck decision tree case, Bayesian spam filtering
Thursday, October 5: Critical fractile analysis
- Homework 5, due October 12
Tuesday, October 10: Critical fractile case study
- carbide.xls, the spreadsheet I showed in class (note that the VLOOKUP function came up with 25 hours, when it probably should have been 26; when I have time, I'll try to figure out how to fix it and post an updated version).
Thursday, October 12: Review for midterm
- EOQ review problem (adapted from last year's midterm)
Tuesday, October 17: Midterm exam
Thursday, October 19: Review midterm, start stochastic EOQ approximations
- One-week homework vacation! No homework given out in this class.
Tuesday, October 24: Finish stochastic EOQ approximations
- Stochastic EOQ example spreadsheets (sorry I forgot to bring this to class)
Thursday, October 26: Deterministic dynamic programming I
- Spreadsheet for DP solution of deterministic inventory problem
- Homework 6, due November 2
Tuesday, October 31: Deterministic dynamic programming II -- inventory, resource allocation, and knapsack
- Spreadsheet for DP solution of deterministic inventory problem
- JavaScript program (Opening this file in most browsers will run the program. To see the program itself, select Source or Page Source from the Browser's View menu)
- Resource allocation JavaScript program
Thursday, November 2: Deterministic dynamic programming III -- part replacement, gains/spoilage/discounting, curse of dimensionality
- Knapsack JavaScript program
- JavaScript program for inventory problem with discounting
- Homework 7, due November 16 (two weeks, due to class cancellation)
Tuesday, November 7: Probabilistic dynamic programming I (substitute teacher)
Thursday, November 9: Class cancelled due to anticipated football game traffic
Tuesday, November 14: Probabilistic dynamic programming II
- JavaScript program for probabilistic inventory example in book
- JavaScript program for larger probabilistic inventory problem
- JavaScript program for probabilistic part replacement problem
Thursday, November 16: Finish probabilistic dynamic programming, start forecasting
- Plane booking problem
- JavaScript program for plane booking problem
- Moving average spreadsheet
- Weighted moving average spreadsheet
Tuesday, November 21: Forecasting II -- exponential smoothing, seasonalized exponential smoothing
- Weighted moving averages -- carry forward spreadsheet
- Exponential smoothing spreadsheet (updated after class -- thanks, Chirag)
- Additive seasonalized exponential smoothing spreadsheet
- Multiplicative seasonalized exponential smoothing spreadsheet
Thursday, November 23: Thanksgiving Holiday
Tuesday, November 28: Forecasting III: trend models; start basics of regression
- Holt's method: exponential smoothing with an additive trend
- Additive Holt-Winter: exponential smoothing with an additive trend and additive seasonality
- Multiplicative Holt-Winter: exponential smoothing with an additive trend and multiplicative seasonality
- Double-multiplicative Holt-Winter: exponential smoothing with a multiplicative trend and multiplicative seasonality
Thursday, November 30: Regression forecasting models
- Simple linear trend regression model
- Quadratic trend regression model
- Seasonal quadratic trend regression model
- Multiplicative regression model with both trend and seasonality
- Mixed additive-multiplicative regression model (Solver only!)
- Homework 8, due December 7
  - hwk8q3data.xls data file
Tuesday, December 5: Putting it all together I
- Propane inventory in-class case study
  - Forecasting spreadsheet
  - JavaScript program based on forecast results
Thursday, December 7: Putting it all together II, teacher evaluations
- Poisson regression in-class case study
Tuesday, December 12: Demand/inventory aggregation, distribute take-home final.
- Inventory aggregation in-class case study
  - JavaScript program for part (a) -- inventory at stores
  - JavaScript program for part (b) -- inventory at warehouse
  - JavaScript programs for part (c) -- inventory at stores, and inventory at warehouse, using a discount factor instead of a holding cost
- Take home final will be distributed in class
  - q4-data.xls file with data for question 4

Homework Solutions

Files are all in PDF format unless otherwise noted (viewable with Adobe Reader).

Solution to homework 1 (I didn't grade Q3 due to the confusing statement of the problem; I just gave everybody full credit)
Solution to homework 2
Solution to homework 3
Solution to homework 4
Solution to homework 5
Solution to homework 6
Solution to homework 7
Solution to homework 8 (Corrected/improved December 12, 2006. You may notice some small differences from your solution to Q3(d), which I believe are due to slight Solver misbehavior.)