I have been thinking about an interesting problem that I've recently found on the BNet channel. My question is inspired by this video.

As Christmas break is approaching, I thought it would be fun to have a Princeton style challenge here. The history of Princeton style challenges can be traced back to the early stages of the inception of Operations Research as a science. Here is how it works:

1. A case is presented by the challenger
2. One key problem in that case study is highlighted
3. Each participant can suggest one paper that can solve the problem
4. People vote on each paper and ultimately one paper will be chosen as the best answer

There are only three rules:

1. You should not devise your own solution and you can just point out a relevant peer reviewed article
2. The paper that you propose should have been published after the publication of the EOQ model in 1913
3. Each participant can only nominate one paper and you cannot say something like "Combine Roundy's paper with Clark and Scarf model"

And here is the challenge:

"Too Good Gourmet" is a small business whose products are cookie gifts for special holidays. During holiday seasons they have to ramp up the production and hire twice as the number of their regular staff and after the holiday season they have to scale down quickly as demand drops dramatically. The co-founder of "Too Good Gourmet", Jennifer Finley, talks about their problem in minute 2:00 of this video. As an educated OR person you need to propose a model that works better than what is currently being used by the founders of the business who do not have any OR background. Suggest only one paper that can help them in solving their staffing/planning/utilization problem throughout the year.

Have a great break and happy holidays!