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作者:Kocaga, Yasar Levent; Armony, Mor; Ward, Amy R.
作者单位:Yeshiva University; New York University; University of Southern California
摘要:In a call center, staffing decisions must be made before the call arrival rate is known with certainty. Once the arrival rate becomes known, the call center may be over-staffed, in which case staff are being paid to be idle, or under-staffed, in which case many callers hang-up in the face of long wait times. Firms that have chosen to keep their call center operations in-house can mitigate this problem by co-sourcing; that is, by sometimes outsourcing calls. Then, the required staffing N depend...
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作者:Paul, Anand; Tan, Yinliang (Ricky); Vakharia, Asoo J.
作者单位:State University System of Florida; University of Florida; Tulane University
摘要:This paper is motivated by observing that an increasing number of firms are offering modular products assembled with multiple option choices for the consumer. Starting with the PC offerings by Dell which allowed (and still allows) users to configure their product by choosing among multiple choices for each option, the current market place seems to have evolved to a make-to-stock scenario where Apple offers its IPAD series with multiple models each with a unique storage size, color, and wireles...
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作者:Chen, Wen; Feng, Qi; Seshadri, Sridhar
作者单位:Providence College; Purdue University System; Purdue University; Indian School of Business (ISB)
摘要:We study an average-cost stochastic inventory control problem in which the firm can replenish inventory and adjust the price at anytime. We establish the optimality to change the price from low to high in each replenishment cycle as inventory is depleted. With costly price adjustment, scale economies of inventory replenishment are reflected in the cycle time instead of lot sizeAn increased fixed ordering cost leads to an extended replenishment cycle but does not necessarily increase the order ...
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作者:Autrey, Romana L.; Bova, Francesco; Soberman, David A.
作者单位:University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; University of Toronto
摘要:Gray markets arise when an intermediary buys a product in a lower-priced, often emerging market and resells it to compete with the product's original manufacturer in a higher priced, more developed market. Evidence suggests that gray markets make the original manufacturer worse off globally by eroding profit margins in developed markets. Thus, it is interesting that many firms do not implement control systems to curb gray market activity. Our analysis suggests that one possible explanation lie...
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作者:Chen, Ying-Ju; Deng, Mingcherng
作者单位:Hong Kong University of Science & Technology; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology; City University of New York (CUNY) System; Baruch College (CUNY)
摘要:While there have been vast discussions on the materialistic benefits of continuous improvement from the Toyota and Honda experiences, the academic literature pays little attention to information sharing. In this study, we construct a dynamic adverse selection model in which the supplier privately observes her production efficiency, and in the contractual duration the manufacturer obtains an informative but imprecise signal regarding this private efficiency. We show that despite the disclosure ...
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作者:Gupta, Shivam; Chen, Wei; Dawande, Milind; Janakiraman, Ganesh
作者单位:University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas; University of Kansas
摘要:Descending mechanisms for procurement (or, ascending mechanisms for selling) have been well-recognized for their simplicity from the viewpoint of bidders-they require less bidder sophistication as compared to sealed-bid mechanisms. In this study, we consider procurement under each of two types of constraints: (1) Individual/Group Capacities: limitations on the amounts that can be sourced from individual and/or subsets of suppliers, and (2) Business Rules: lower and upper bounds on the number o...
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作者:Huang, Tingliang; Liu, Qian
作者单位:Boston College; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
摘要:In retailing industries, such as apparel, sporting goods, customer electronics, and appliances, many firms deploy sophisticated modeling and optimization software to conduct dynamic pricing in response to uncertain and fluctuating market conditions. However, the possibility of markdown pricing creates an incentive for customers to strategize over the timing of their purchases. How should a retailing firm optimally account for customer behavior when making its pricing and stocking/capacity deci...
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作者:Narayanan, Arunachalam; Moritz, Brent B.
作者单位:University of Houston System; University of Houston; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
摘要:Supply chain performance often depends on the individual decisions of channel members. Even when individuals have access to relevant information, order variation tends to increase when moving up the supply chain, a phenomenon known as the bullwhip effect. While prior research has investigated several structural/environmental factors which can mitigate the bullwhip effect, the underlying behavioral factors contributing to it are an open question. Using a production and distribution decision-mak...
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作者:Pang, Zhan; Berman, Oded; Hu, Ming
作者单位:Lancaster University; City University of Hong Kong; University of Toronto
摘要:In the classic revenue management (RM) problem of selling a fixed quantity of perishable inventories to price-sensitive non-strategic consumers over a finite horizon, the optimal pricing decision at any time depends on two important factors: consumer valuation and bid price. The former is determined exogenously by the demand side, while the latter is determined jointly by the inventory level on the supply side and the consumer valuations in the time remaining within the selling horizon. Becaus...
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作者:Geng, Xin; Huh, Woonghee Tim; Nagarajan, Mahesh
作者单位:University of British Columbia
摘要:We look at a simple service system with two servers serving arriving jobs (single class). Our interest is in examining the effect of routing policies on servers when they care about fairness among themselves, and when they can endogenously choose capacities in response to the routing policy. Therefore, we study the two-server game where the servers' objective functions have a term explicitly modeling fairness. Moreover, we focus on four commonly seen policies that are from one general class. T...