Informs 2015

391 / 552

INFORMS Philadelphia – 2015
389
3 - Localized Assortment Selection
Graham Poliner, Vice President Merchandise And Supply Chain
Analytics, Macy’s Inc., 1440 Broadway, New York, NY, 10018,
United States of America, ,
Bhagyesh Phanse, Mark Posner
We consider the assortment selection problem for omnichannel selling locations
to support multiple fulfillment alternatives (e.g. direct to consumer, walk in store
customers, and buy online pick up in store). The total assortment breadth offered
is much larger than the capacity of a single store or fulfillment center. We describe
how cross-channel demand information and product affinities can be used to
inform localized assortment decisions, and we present the results of pilot
implementations.
4 - Optimal Inventory Placement under Warehouse
Capacity Constraints
Salal Humair, Principal Research Scientist, , Inc., 500
Westlake Ave N, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States of America,
Onur Ozkok, Erdem Eskigun
We consider how to place initial stocks for multiple products in multiple
warehouses that serve multiple regions, when demand from a region can be
fulfilled by more than one warehouse. We obtain the optimal initial stocks using a
constructive algorithm with reasonable complexity. We use numerical
experiments to understand how the algorithm distributes products across
warehouses. We use these insights to decompose the problem of how much to
buy vs. how to distribute it across the warehouses.
WA50
50-Room 106A, CC
New Models and Algorithms for Exploration and
Exploitation Tradeoff Optimization
Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Sponsored Session
Chair: Retsef Levi, J. Spencer Standish (1945) Professor of Operations
Management, Sloan School of Management, MIT, 100 Main Street,
BDG E62-562, Cambridge, MA, 02142, United States of America,
1 - Approximate Gittins Indices for The Multi-armed Bandits
Eli Gutin, Mr, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02139,
United States of America, , Vivek Farias
Multi-armed bandits is a fundamental problem that deals with the tradeoff
between exploration and exploitation. While theoretical regret bounds have been
proved for many solution methods, only in special cases have these bounds been
shown to be optimal. By using Gittins’ theorem, that applies to the discounted
infinite horizon MAB problem, we propose an efficient, asymptotically optimal
algorithm, AGI, that is competitive with IDS, UCB and Thompson Sampling
methods for Bernoulli rewards.
2 - Stochastic Selection Problems with Testing
Chen Attias, Weizmann Institute of Science, 234 Herzl Street,
Rehovot, 7610001, Israel, Retsef Levi,
Thomas Magnanti, Yaron Shaposhnik, Robert Krauthgamer
We study a new class of stochastic selection problems, where the goal is to choose
the minimal cost option among alternatives with a-priori stochastic costs, by
introducing a testing option that has fixed cost but reveals the realization of the
random cost of the option being tested. For several interesting cases of this model,
we obtain the optimal testing order and show that local decision rules that only
consider the value of the currently tested option are optimal.
3 - When and How to Test in Scheduling Nonhomogeneous
Job Classes
Yaron Shaposhnik, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Bldg. E40-
149, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States of America,
Retsef Levi, Thomas Magnanti
We study a fundamental tradeoff that arises in many operational settings of
performing work under uncertainty (exploitation) and investing capacity to
reduce the underlying uncertainty (exploration). Sample domains include
emergency departments, maintenance, scheduling, and project management. Our
work leverages innovative analysis based on stochastic orders to obtain crisp
descriptions of computationally efficient optimal exploration-exploitation policies,
and provides managerial insights.
WA51
51-Room 106B, CC
Analyzing and Managing Incentives
Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Sponsored Session
Chair: Tinglong Dai, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University, 100
International Dr, Baltimore, MD, 21202, United States of America,
Co-Chair: Fuqiang Zhang, Olin Business School, Washington
University, St. Louis, MO, United States of America,
1 - Incorporating Customer Response in an Online-to-offline
Fulfillment Strategy
Elnaz Jalilipour Alishah, PhD Candidate, University of
Washington, Seattle, Foster School of Business, Mackenzie Hall
358, Seattle, Wa, 98195-3200, United States of America,
, Yong-Pin Zhou
We study an omni-channel retailer who fulfills online customer orders using
inventory from offline retail stores. We examine the practice of fulfilling from the
nearest location, and suggest other strategies in response to customer price and
leadtime preferences.
2 - Signalling by Testing
Tinglong Dai, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University,
100 International Dr, Baltimore, MD, 21202,
United States of America, , Shubhranshu Singh
Diagnostic experts, such as medical specialists, often only imperfectly observes
customers’ true conditions, and may resort to advanced testing procedures. We
model a diagnostic expert’s diagnostic decision tree problem when the expert’s
level of competence is unknown to customers. We characterize perfect Bayesian
equilibria, and prove the existence and uniqueness of a separating equilibrium.
Our results offer insights into diagnostic experts’ testing behavior driven by their
signaling efforts.
3 - Information Sharing in Competing Supply Chains with Production
Cost Reduction
Shilu Tong, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, 2001,
Longxiang Blvd, Longgang District, Shenzhen, China,
, Albert Ha, Quan Tian
We consider the problem of sharing demand information in two competing
supply chains, each consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer. A supply
chain that engages in information sharing triggers a reaction from the rival chain.
Such a reaction may benefit or hurt the first supply chain, depending on whether
the retailers compete on quantity or price, and whether the manufacturers are
efficient in cost reduction or not.
4 - Push vs. Pull: How to Best Allocate Supply Risk in Random Yield
Supply Chains
Guang Xiao, Olin Business School, Washington University in St.
Louis, St. Louis, United States of America, ,
Panos Kouvelis
We consider a bilateral supply chain with supply random yield and propose three
variants of wholesale price contracts, which induce different risk allocations
between the supply chain parties. We completely characterize the Pareto set of
any contract type combination to fully explore the price negotiation possibilities
and profit improvement opportunities within the supply chain.
WA52
52-Room 107A, CC
Retail Management I
Contributed Session
Chair: Anurag Agarwal, Professor, University of South Florida,
8350 N Tamiami Tr, Sarasota, FL, 34243, United States of America,
1 - Shrinking Shrinkage: An Empirical Investigation into Antecedents
and Countermeasures
Shivom Aggarwal, IE Business School, Instituto de Empresa, S.L.,
CIF: B823343, C/ Maria de Molina, 12 Bajo, Madrid, 28006,
Spain, , Daniel Corsten
Vendor-side fraud has been overlooked in literature due to intractability, but
poses to be significant antecedent of shrinkage. Using multi-store longitudinal
data from a US retailer, we investigate holistic antecedents of shrinkage and how
they affect store performance. The unified framework will contribute to extant
literature on efficient retail operations.
WA52