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Sequencing an N-Stage Process with Feedback
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
Abstract
N tasks must be successfully performed for a job to be completed. The tasks may be attempted in any order, where each attempt of task i requires an expected cost ci and is successful with probability pi. Whenever an attempt fails, the job is fed back to the initial stage and the entire sequence starts again. We show that the cost of completing a job is minimized if the tasks are sequenced via increasing values of ci/(l–pi). We further show that the same result holds when the feedback can be either to stage i itself or to the starting task.
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- Information
- Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , April 1988 , pp. 263 - 265
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988
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