Boronico [Boronico JS. An investigation into the costs and benefits of reli
ability of service. Omega 1998;26(1):99-114] considers the determination of
ex ante service reliability in a price-taking, expected-profit-maximizing
enterprise that must respect an expected-service-quality constraint in the
face of stochastic demand. The constrained service-reliability issue, howev
er, is much more complex than his analysis reveals. That complexity comes t
o light once one recognizes the additional need to consider the curvature o
f the underlying functions and the demands imposed upon that curvature by t
he second-order conditions for a constrained maximum. The introduction of u
ncertainty into the picture only adds to the issue's complexity and further
complicates the problem of drawing unambiguous inferences. (C) 2000 Elsevi
er Science Ltd. All rights reserved.