Two countermeasure strategies to mitigate random disruptions in capacitated systems

Abstract

We examine a capacitated system exposed to random stepwise capacity disruptions with exponentially distributed interarrival times and uniformly distributed magnitudes. We explore two countermeasure policies for a risk-neutral decision maker who seeks to maximize the long-run average reward. A one-phase policy considers implementation of countermeasures throughout the entirety of a disruption cycle. The results of this analysis form a basis for a two-phase model which implements countermeasures during only a fraction of a disruption cycle. We present an extensive numerical analysis as well as a sensitivity study on the fluctuations of some system parameter values.