This award will support a long-term visit by Professor Ronald W. Wolff, Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Engineering Systems Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, to Japan for a cooperative research project with Professor Masakiyo Miyazawa at the Science University of Tokyo and Professor Genji Yamazaki at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology. The researchers will investigate several topics in queueing theory that have applications to model manufacturing systems and communications networks as follows: 1) Bounds and Approximations for Queues and Queueing Networks. Generally performance measure for queueing networks cannot be determined exactly, but must be approximated. They will investigate the errors in these approximations in several ways including light-traffic analysis. For tandem queues they will investigate bounds on the difference in performance measures for different arrangements of the order of the servers. They will also look at some unsolved problems about bounds and approximations for simple single-and multi-server queues. 2) Conditions for Finite Delay Moments. The formal derivation of approximations and bounds often involve the requirement that certain terms either cancel or are small. This in turn requires that certain delay moments be finite. Recent progress has been made in this area and the researchers believe they can contribute further knowledge to the problem. 3) Fundamental Properties of Queues. They will investigate applications of attained waiting time to queues, where one of the objectives is to find new bounds on performance measures. Finally, they will investigate simplifications to existing theory that may result from the merger of different approaches, such as the application of sample-path methods to the marked point processes. There is a large amount of research currently taking place on queueing theory in Japan. Thus it is an excellent opportunity for Professor Wolff, who is one of the outstanding queueing theorists in the world, to collaborate with Professors Miyazawa and Yamazaki who are also world renown in the field. Each researcher brings a unique capability to the effort yet each is also experienced in the work of the others. It is expected that this collaboration should provide some exciting results as well as continued cooperation between the researchers for years to come.
