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作者：Luo, Jianzhe; Kulkarni, Vidyadhar G.; Ziya, Serhan
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
摘要：We consider an appointment-based service system (e.g., an outpatient clinic) for which appointments need to be scheduled before the service session starts. Patients with scheduled appointments may or may not show up for their appointments. The service of scheduled patients can be interrupted by emergency requests that have a higher priority. We develop a framework that can be utilized in determining the optimal appointment policies under different assumptions regarding rewards, costs, and deci...
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作者：Mersereau, Adam J.; Zhang, Dan
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder
摘要：A growing segment of the revenue management and pricing literature assumes strategic customers who are forward-looking in their pursuit of utility. Recognizing that such behavior may not be directly observable by a seller, we examine the implications of seller uncertainty over strategic customer behavior in a markdown pricing setting. We assume that some proportion of customers purchase impulsively in the first period if the price is below their willingness to pay, while other customers strate...
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作者：Parlaktuerk, Ali K.
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
摘要：We consider a firm that sells two vertically (quality) differentiated products to strategically forward-looking consumers over two periods, setting the prices dynamically in each period. The consumers are heterogeneous in their evaluations of quality, and strategic in that they decide not only whether and which product variant to buy, but also when to buy, choosing the option that maximizes their utility. We derive the equilibrium of the pricing-purchasing game between the firm and the consume...
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作者：Tezcan, Tolga; Behzad, Banafsheh
作者单位：University of Rochester; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
摘要：We consider the robust design and control of call center systems with flexible interactive voice response (IVR) systems. In a typical call center equipped with an IVR system, customers are handled first by the IVR system, which is a computerized system that often enables customers to self-serve. Those customers whose service cannot be handled by the IVR system are sent to the second stage to be served by agents. To address the design of a call center with a flexible IVR system, we consider a c...
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作者：Roubos, Alex; Koole, Ger; Stolletz, Raik
作者单位：Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; University of Mannheim
摘要：In practice, call center service levels are reported over periods of finite length that are usually no longer than 24 hours. In such small periods the service level has a large variability. It is therefore not sufficient to base staffing decisions only on the expected service level. In this paper we consider the classical M/M/s queueing model that is often used in call centers. We develop accurate approximations for the service-level distribution based on extensive simulations. This distributi...
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作者：Shang, Kevin H.
作者单位：Duke University
摘要：Companies often face nonstationary demand due to product life cycles and seasonality, and nonstationary demand complicates supply chain managers' inventory decisions. This paper proposes a simple heuristic for determining stocking levels in a serial inventory system. Unlike the exact optimization algorithm, the heuristic generates a near-optimal solution by solving a series of independent single-stage systems. The heuristic is constructed based on three results we derive. First, we provide a n...
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作者：Secomandi, Nicola; Wang, Mulan X.
作者单位：Carnegie Mellon University
摘要：Commodity merchants use real option models to manage their operations. A central element of such a model is its underlying operating policy. We focus on network contracts for the transport capacity of natural gas pipelines, specific energy conversion assets. Practitioners commonly manage these contracts as portfolios of spread options. Although computationally fast, we show that this approach in general is heuristic because of the suboptimality of its operating policy. We propose a different c...
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作者：Wang, Tong; Atasu, Atalay; Kurtulus, Muemin
作者单位：National University of Singapore; University System of Georgia; Georgia Institute of Technology; Vanderbilt University
摘要：We consider a newsvendor who dynamically updates her forecast of the market demand over a finite planning horizon. The forecast evolves according to the martingale model of forecast evolution (MMFE). The newsvendor can place multiple orders with increasing ordering cost over time to satisfy demand that realizes at the end of the planning horizon. In this context, we explore the trade-off between improving demand forecast and increasing ordering cost. We show that the optimal ordering policy is...
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作者：Kroes, James; Subramanian, Ravi; Subramanyam, Ramanath
作者单位：Boise State University; University System of Georgia; Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
摘要：Cap and trade programs impose limits on industry emissions but offer individual firms the flexibility to choose among different operational levers toward compliance, including inputs, process changes, and the use of allowances to account for emissions. In this paper, we examine the relationships among (1) levers for compliance (at-source pollution prevention, end-of-pipe pollution control, and the use of allowances); (2) environmental performance; and (3) firm market performance for the contex...
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作者：Yang, Zhibin (Ben); Aydin, Goeker; Babich, Volodymyr; Beil, Damian R.
作者单位：University of Oregon; Indiana University System; IU Kelley School of Business; Indiana University Bloomington; Georgetown University; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要：We study a buyer's strategic use of a dual-sourcing option when facing suppliers possessing private information about their disruption likelihood. We solve for the buyer's optimal procurement contract. We show that the optimal contract can be interpreted as the buyer choosing between diversification and competition benefits. Better information increases diversification benefits and decreases competition benefits. Therefore, with better information the buyer is more inclined to diversify. Moreo...
