The Fifth Column—On Optimum Scheduling, OR Beer Trucks, Second Clarinets, and Carls

One of the commonest OR/MS areas of attempted applications is the well-beloved wall-to-wall scheduling model. This problem usually appears when some corporate big dog says: “Why is it that our plants/mills/factories can never seem to meet the demand of our market when things are going well, but we have warehouses of the stuff when nobody's buying?” Of course, one of the clever ways to hide excess inventory is to have enough of it en route. I recall with great amusement pointing out to one corporate biggy that he had no reason to be proud of the fact that their company had so few warehouses. As long as they continued to use the Burlington Northern as their storage bins, they were in great shape. Naturally, he had never heard of demurrage and hadn't the foggiest idea of what their rolling warehouses were costing them. It doesn't really matter anyway, they were speedily bought as a tax shelter for another company in the first quarter of 1980; Sic Transit Gloria Demurro.