Abstract
Operations of a typical metropolitan daily newspaper are studied, and a mathematical model is developed to minimize the total expected annual production cost of operations through choice of various controllable schemes. The identifiable heterogeneities within the system are exploited in a positive way. Varying sensitivity of customers to inclusion of the latest news, varying advertisers' desired distribution with in selected zones, and limited interest for die local news are handled by offering multiple editions of die newspaper. Production workload is also distributed between advance and live runs, allowing printing of only news-sensitive sections during live-runs. To reduce peak loads, the final selection of start and run times for sections of various editions during live-runs, are made around values prescribed by management.
The delays due to critical failures are avoided by adequately overdesigning press capacity, leaving only non-critical failures to affect delays. Recommendations are made for reducing non-critical failures.