2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

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INFORMS Nashville – 2016
34
SA49
SA49
211-MCC
Case Competition I
Sponsored: Education (INFORMED)
Sponsored Session
Chair: Palaniappa Krishnan, University of Delaware, Newark, DE,
United States,
1 - Wine Of Kings, King Of Wines
David Kopcso, Babson College, Wellesley, MA, United States,
It is a cool October morning and Borbála Bodnar is faced with a dilemma. The
harvest at her northeast Hungary vineyard is finishing. Her hopes for a harvest of
botrytis-affected, aszu (dried) grapes is waning. The seasonally rainy days are
approaching. Bodnar must decide if she should harvest the grapes immediately
for a modest profit or wait with the hope of a Botrytis infection. A heavy
downpour would swell the already ripe grapes with water producing an inferior
wine with little profit while a shower or even just a high humidity day followed a
day later by a drop in humidity would be ideal for the development of the
Botrytis cinerea fungus needed to produce the very profitable, complex, sweet
Tokaji wine.
2 - Risks and Rewards in Professional Tennis
Fredrik Odegaard, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
The case centers on the professional tennis tour ATP, and the world-famous and
prestigious Grand Slam tournament Wimbledon.Depending on the instructor’s
use of the case, the case is suitable in both an introductory and as well as
intermediate/advanced management science/analytics course. Although the main
target audience is under-graduate business and engineering students, the case is
also suitable for Masters students (including MBA). The case has been used both
as a casebased final exam and as material for in-class case discussion.
3 - Optimizing Promotions For Supermarkets Using Data Analytics
Maxime Cohen, New York University, Stern School of Business,
New York, NY, United States, Georgia Perakis
In this case, we expose the students to the issues faced by a supermarket manager
seeking to optimize price promotions for a category of products. The students will
learn: how to handle data, demand modeling and forecasting, business rules and
mathematical modeling, optimization formulation, solving linear programs, and
how to measure the practical impact of the approach. The case includes data sets
so that the students can experience handling data. The approach encompasses the
entire process behind promotion planning, from data collection to optimizing
promotion decisions.
4 - Ingenuity Technology-From Chaos To Structured Data
William Schmidt, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States,
This case will familiarize students with the process of merging together and
analyzing data from multiple files. Students will (1) conduct a data integration
effort similar to what they may encounter it in a practical setting and (2) perform
an analysis on the combined data set. The case is designed such that the tasks can
be conducted using a variety of platforms. The setting is a recently founded
technology firm that has experienced rapid growth in its first 2 years of
operations. The protagonist must decide whether a new sales process has
improved the performance of the sales organization.
SA50
212-MCC
Gender and Diversity-based Research
Sponsored: Women in OR, MS
Sponsored Session
Chair: Sarah G Nurre, University of Arkansas, 4207 Bell Engineering,
Fayetteville, AR, 72701, United States,
1 - Evaluations At Every Corner A Discussion Of Bias In The
Evaluation Process
Tristan Botelho, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge,
MA, United States,
Evaluations were traditionally handled by experts (e.g., critics, experts, judges),
however, over the past 10-15 years, platforms have emerged to facilitate the
evaluation process in nearly every domain. Now, any individual or firm has an
outlet that they can use to evaluate a candidate, good, or service with a click of a
button. Further, the prevalence of these evaluation processes has led to
organizations utilizing similar rating systems to evaluate workers, ideas, and
strategy. In this talk I review some work on how biases can enter into different
stages of the evaluation process affecting evaluation outcomes. I will specifically
focus on issues related to social influence, gender, and expertise.
2 - It’s A Man’s Job: Income And The Gender Gap In Industrial
Research
Myriam Mariani, University, 1, Bocconi, Italy,
This study examines differences in income and job performance between women
and men in creative jobs tasked with achieving technological inventions. By
building on data pertaining to 9,692 inventors from 23 countries, this study
shows that female inventors represent only 4.2% of total inventors, and they
earn 14% less than their male peers. The gap persists after controlling for sources
of heterogeneity, the selection of inventors into types of jobs and tasks, and
potential parenthood, instrumented by exploiting religious practices. The income
gap is not associated with differences in the quality of the inventions.
3 - An Agenda For Diversity And Inclusion-related Research within
OR/MS/Analytics
Michael P Johnson, University of Massachusetts Boston,
100 Morrissey Blvd, M-3-428A, Department of Public Policy and
Public Affairs, Boston, MA, 02124, United States,
Diversity and inclusion have been widely studied and debated, most often within
the social sciences. What contributions can operations research, management sci-
ence and analytics make to this domain of inquiry? This talk will critically exam-
ine assumptions and practices within the decision sciences that may support as
well impede diversity- and inclusion-related research, and propose a research
agenda that can challenge yet enrich our profession.
4 - Bridging The Gap: Optimal Responses To Equal Pay Legislation
Margret Bjarnadottir, University of Maryland, R H Smith School,
College Park, MD, 20, United States, ,
David Anderson
We study how firms can reduce any measured demographic based pay-gap (such
as the gender pay gap), in the most cost efficient way possible. We show that by
prioritizing wage increases and targeting workers that will have the greatest
impact, a manager can meet the Equal Pay for Equal Work standard for less than
half the cost of the naive methods. We further formulate a trade-off optimization
model that balances the need to close a pay gap with employee fairness, given a
fixed budget during the annual review cycle.
SA51
213-MCC
Applied Humanitarian Operations Management
Sponsored: Public Sector OR
Sponsored Session
Chair: Alfonso J Pedraza-Martinez, Indiana University, 1309 E. 10th
Street, Room HH 4100, Bloomington, IN, 47405, United States,
1 - Dynamic Allocation Of NGO Funds Among Program, Fundraising,
And Administration
Telesilla Kotsi, Indiana university, Bloomington, IN, United States,
Goker Aydin, Alfonso Pedraza Martinez
NGOs report three types of spending: program spending to deliver services
directly to beneficiaries; fundraising spending; and administrative spending.
Watchdog organizations give higher ratings to NGOs that allocate more of their
budget to the program. However, fundraising and administrative spending are
also necessary. Fundraising helps to increase the NGO’s future budget, while
administrative spending helps to make future program spending more impactful.
We model this trade-off in a dynamic program. One of our results is that NGOs
with tight budgets should prioritize fundraising and administration now, so that
they are in a better position to make impactful program spending in the future.
2 - Supporting Hurricane Inventory Management Decisions With
Consumer Demand Estimates
Douglas Morrice, University of Texas Ausitn,
Paul Cronin,
Fehmi Tanrisever, John Butler
We consider inventory allocation issues faced by a retailer during a hurricane
event and provide insights that can be applied to humanitarian operations during
slow-onset events. We start with an empirical analysis using regression that
triangulates three sources of information: a large point-of-sales data set from a
Texas Gulf Coast retailer, the retailer’s operational and logistical constraints, and
hurricane forecast data from the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Using the
results of the empirical analysis and the NHC forecast data, we construct a
demand model and develop an inventory management model to satisfy consumer
demand prior to a hurricane making landfall.