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作者：Ormeci, Melda; Dai, J. G.; Vate, John Vande
作者单位：University System of Georgia; Georgia Institute of Technology
摘要：When a manufacturer places repeated orders with a supplier to meet changing production requirements, he faces the challenge of finding the right balance between holding costs and the operational costs involved in adjusting the shipment sizes. We consider an inventory whose content fluctuates as a Brownian motion in the absence of control. At any moment, a controller can adjust the inventory level by any positive or negative quantity, but incurs both a fixed cost and a cost proportional to the ...
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作者：Hopp, Wallace J.; Xu, Xiaowei
作者单位：University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Rutgers University System; Rutgers University New Brunswick; Rutgers University Newark
摘要：We propose a static approximation of dynamic demand substitution behavior based on a fluid network model and a service-inventory mapping. This approximation greatly enhances our ability to analyze the interdependent inventory/service, price, and product assortment decisions in noncompetitive and competitive scenarios with demand substitution. We demonstrate that the approximation is well behaved and then apply it to two previously intractable applications. First, we study a price and service c...
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作者：Kunnumkal, Sumit; Topaloglu, Huseyin
作者单位：Indian School of Business (ISB); Cornell University
摘要：In this paper, we consider numerous inventory control problems for which the base-stock policies are known to be optimal, and we propose stochastic approximation methods to compute the optimal base-stock levels. The existing stochastic approximation methods in the literature guarantee that their iterates converge, but not necessarily to the optimal base-stock levels. In contrast, we prove that the iterates of our methods converge to the optimal base-stock levels. Moreover, our methods continue...
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作者：Angelus, Alexandar; Porteus, Evan L.
作者单位：Singapore Management University; Stanford University
摘要：We formulate a finite-horizon nonstationary dynamic single-asset assembly problem, which covers both a liquid-asset assembly problem, based on the work of Rosling published in 1989, where the single asset is the single product being assembled, and a fixed-asset assembly problem, in which the single asset is production capacity. In the latter case, capacity is assembled over time from components and may be used to manufacture many products. In the spirit of Rosling, we provide conditions under ...
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作者：Zhang, Hao; Zenios, Stefanos
作者单位：University of Southern California; Stanford University
摘要：This paper proposes a general framework for a large class of multiperiod principal-agent problems. In this framework, a principal has a primary stake in the performance of a system but delegates its control to an agent. The underlying system is a Markov decision process, where the state of the system can only be observed by the agent but the agent's action is observed by both parties. This paper develops a dynamic programming algorithm to derive optimal long-term contracts for the principal. T...
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作者：Anderson, Edward J.; Hu, Xinmin
作者单位：University of New South Wales Sydney
摘要：Firms compete in supply functions when they offer a schedule of prices and quantities into a market; for example, this occurs in many wholesale electricity markets. We study the equilibrium behaviour when firms differ, both with regard to their costs and their capacities. We characterize strong equilibrium solutions in which, given the other players' supply functions, optimal profits are achieved for every demand realisation. If the demand can be low enough for it to be met economically with s...
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作者：Adelman, Daniel; Mersereau, Adam J.
作者单位：University of Chicago; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
摘要：We consider a broad class of stochastic dynamic programming problems that are amenable to relaxation via decomposition. These problems comprise multiple subproblems that are independent of each other except for a collection of coupling constraints on the action space. We fit an additively separable value function approximation using two techniques, namely, Lagrangian relaxation and the linear programming (LP) approach to approximate dynamic programming. We prove various results comparing the r...
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作者：Mahabhashyam, Sai Rajesh; Gautam, Natarajan; Kumara, Soundar R. T.
作者单位：Oracle; Texas A&M University System; Texas A&M University College Station; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
摘要：A system consisting of two buffers, each with independent fluid sources, is considered in this paper. Due to ease of implementation, the output capacities for the two buffers depend on the workload of only one of the buffers that is measured. A threshold-based policy is considered to dynamically assign output capacities for both buffers. Marginal workload distributions for the two buffers need to be evaluated for this policy. The key contribution of this paper is the performance analysis to de...
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作者：Jaillet, Patrick; Wagner, Michael R.
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); California State University System; California State University East Bay
摘要：We consider online routing optimization problems where the objective is to minimize the time needed to visit a set of locations under various constraints; the problems are online because the set of locations are revealed incrementally over time. We consider two main problems: (1) the online traveling salesman problem (TSP) with precedence and capacity constraints, and (2) the online TSP with m salesmen. For both problems we propose online algorithms, each with a competitive ratio of 2; for the...
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作者：Lim, Andrew; Rodrigues, Brian; Xu, Zhou
作者单位：Hong Kong University of Science & Technology; Singapore Management University; Hong Kong Polytechnic University
摘要：Transportation companies that operate in seasonal markets where differences in demand occur in peak and nonpeak periods often negotiate for some form of demand smoothing with the customer-i.e., the shipper. In this paper, we study a shipper's transportation procurement model, in which the shipper gives assurances, through volume guarantees negotiated with the transportation companies, that shipments made in nonpeak periods will be commensurate with shipments in peak periods. The shipper uses t...
