All class policies subject to change at instructor's discretion.

Quick Overview:

• Time:
  • Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:00-6:20 PM
• Place:
  • Usually Beck 213.  I am not sure, but we might hold a few classes in one of the Levin basement computer labs    
• Instructor: Jonathan Eckstein
• E-mail: jeckstei@rutcor.rutgers.edu
• Class website: http://eckstein.rutgers.edu/aom/
• Office: 255 J. H. Levin Building, Livingston Campus
• Telephone: (732) 445-0510; also (732) 445-3272 for urgent calls (my RUTCOR office).
• Office hours: Tentatively scheduled for
  • Tuesdays 1:30-3:30 PM.
  • Thursdays 1:30-3:30 PM
• Text: 
  • Introduction to Probability Models -- Operations Research, Volume Two by Wayne L. Winston, Duxbury/Thomson/Brooks-Cole.
  • A collection of supplementary readings produced by University Publishing Solutions.  Due to the small size of the class, University Publishing will visit class and sell the supplementary readings packet directly to you at the wholesale price.  The readings consist of
    • A variety of Harvard Business School case studies on decision making under uncertainty
    • A chapter on time series forecasting which is more extensive that the material in Winston.
• Software: There will be much more manual calculation than in 623:386, but there will also be some use of Excel and Solver.   We will also do some programming in JavaScript
• First meeting: Tuesday, September 5, 2006.  
• Final exam:  From class hour schedule: Wednesday, December 20, 8-11 AM
   

Course Content

The department has already voted to rename this course "Decision and Inventory Analysis," but this change has not propagated through the Rutgers bureaucracy yet.  The name change was meant to reflect the principal content the course already has, and that much of it is not particularly advanced.  The course focuses on the quantitative analysis of some very basic business problems: making decisions in an uncertain environment, and in particular managing inventories and order quantities within the basic building block of a "supply chain". 

This course is more advanced than the introductory operations management course in that it emphasizes not only modeling decision problems, but also the details of how one solves them.  In the course of analyzing simple inventory systems and decision problems, we will encounter some key analytical techniques, including simple nonlinear optimization, decision trees, and various forms of a technique called dynamic programming -- informally, "thinking backwards" through all possible states of a system, starting at the possible outcomes and working back towards the present.  The basic topic sequence I am planning is:

• Business applications of calculus and elementary nonlinear optimization -- we will focus on various EOQ models for inventory
• Decision tree methods for dealing with uncertainty
• Topics in combining uncertainty modeling and inventory planning
• Dynamic programming -- both deterministic and probabilistic -- with a focus on inventory problems.  This topic generalizes the notion of decision trees
• Time series forecasting: time series forecasting, especially for product demands, is a critical problem in all supply chains
• Various topics in combining forecasting and the other analytical techniques in the course, and the use of aggregation to reduce forecasting errors and safety stocks.

If things go faster than expected, we may also cover some material in queuing theory that we covered in last year's version of the course.
 

General Information

• Attendance:  I do not take formal attendance, and attendance has no direct affect on your grade.  My view is that you are supposed to be adults, and if you can learn that material without my help, I will not be personally offended.  However, if you don't come to class, please don't come to office hours with questions about the material I discussed there.  In severe weather, please check the class website -- if at all possible, I will post any class cancellation or schedule change information there as soon as I can.  You can also monitor the Rutgers main website, WCTC AM 1450, or Rutgers INFO AM 530 for possible university closing information.
• E-Mail List:  I may occasionally use Rutgers' RAMS mail system to post important information such as class cancellations or homework problem corrections and hints.  Please check your e-mail regularly for class announcements -- it will be your responsibility if you miss one of these announcements.  RAMS uses whatever e-mail Rutgers has on file for you, which is usually your "eden" e-mail account.  If you prefer to receive e-mail at another address, you must do one of the following two things.  
  • Configure your eden account to forward mail by following the instructions in http://faq.rutgers.edu/content/oleksiak/html/Mail.Forward.Eden.JimiO.html.
  • Update the address Rutgers officially has on file by modifying your student record online via https://www.acs.rutgers.edu/studentdir/. 
• Questions: Unless you have skipped class, questions are strongly encouraged during class, during office hours, and via e-mail.
• Exams: There will be one in-class midterm exam and a final. Both exams will be open book. The final will be "cumulative", covering all topics in the course.
• Homework: I am planning on about 10 homework assignments. Typically, homework assignments will be handed out on Thursday, and due in class the following Thursday.  There is zero credit for late homework (although I may make excuse students from specific homework assignments in documented cases of genuine medical or family emergency). I will drop your one lowest assignment score in computing your overall homework performance, with late or missing assignments counting as a score of zero.  This policy effectively allows you to skip one homework assignment without penalty.  However, I would definitely recommend against skipping a homework early in the term.
• Collaboration and Cheating: You are allowed to seek or give help to other students on homework assignments. However, although there is no formal penalty for copying homework, I have found it critical for the learning process that you work through the problems yourself and hand in your own work.  Otherwise, you will  probably "crash and burn" on the exams. No collaboration of any kind is permitted on exams. 
• Grading: No letter grades are assigned to individual assignments or exams, only numeric scores from 0 to 100. Your course grade will be based on your aggregate score, combining your scores on all written class work with following weights:
  • 30% Midterm
  • 45% Final
  • 25% Homework (excluding your worst score)

  I reserve the right to make changes to the grade calculation scheme.   For further information, see my "how I grade" page (which is not specific to this course).
   

Tentative Class Schedule

Detailed schedule, subject to change: