Product guarantees or warranties have been around for generations, but formal approaches for establishing and examining warranties have been considered only during the past 20 years. A review of the literature on warranty models and analysis methods is provided, along with some suggestions for further research.

The problem of assigning patrol boats. subject to resource constraints, to capture or delay an infiltrator with perishable contraband attempting escape across a long, narrow strait is formulated as a two-sided time sequential game. Optimal mixed strategies are derived for the situation of one patrol boat against one smuggler. Procedures for obtaining numerical solutions for R > 1 patrol boats are discussed.

Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pages With 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit http://www.informs.org

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This paper describes an accurate method of approximating the mean of the first-passage time distribution for an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process with a single absorbing barrier. The accuracy of the approximation is demonstrated through some numerical comparisons.

Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pages With 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit http://www.informs.org

We describe a generalized maximum entropy principle for dealing with decision problems involving uncertainty but with some prior knowledge about the probability space corresponding to nature. This knowledge is expressed through known bounds on event probabilities and moments, which can be incorporated into a nonlinear programming problem. The solution provides a maximum entropy distribution that is then used in treating the decision problem as one involving risk. We describe an example application that involves the selection of oil spill recovery systems for inland harbor regions.

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