Journal of

Marketing Development and Competitiveness

Scholar Gateway

Abstracts prior to volume 5(1) have been archived!

Issue 5(1), October 2010 -- Paper Abstracts

Girard  (p. 9-22)

Cooper (p. 23-32)

Kunz-Osborne (p. 33-41)

Coulmas-Law (p.42-46)

Stasio (p. 47-56)

Albert-Valette-Florence (p.57-63)

Zhang-Rauch (p. 64-70)

Alam-Yasin (p. 71-78)

Mattare-Monahan-Shah (p. 79-94)

Nonis-Hudson-Hunt (p. 95-106)

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT POLICY AND PRACTICE

Ohm’s Law / Little’s Law: Expanding the Analogy

Author(s): Bill Roach

Citation: Bill Roach, (2011) "Ohm’s Law / Little’s Law: Expanding the Analogy," Journal of Management Policy and Practice, Vol. 12, Iss. 3, pp. 41 - 48

Article Type: Research paper

Publisher: North American Business Press

Abstract:

Sometimes analogies between diverse disciplines lead to important and useful results. Ford Whitman

Harris (1913) observed that inventory related costs were similar to the costs for transmitting electricity

as they were described by Kelvin’s Law(1881). Whitman’s analogy led him to formulate the Total Cost

function and the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ). This paper observes the analogy between Ohm’s Law

in electrical engineering and Little’s Law in queuing theory and attempts to explore that analogy. The

analogy is particularly intriguing because Little’s Law is at the heart of several metrics used in Balanced

Scorecard analysis developed by Kaplan and Norton (1992, 1996).