2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

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INFORMS Nashville – 2016
494
3 - Pricing And Optimization In Shared-Vehicle Systems
Siddhartha Banerjee, Cornell University,
We propose a framework for data-driven pricing in shared vehicle systems in
which customers can pick up and drop off vehicles in different locations.
Compared to traditional pricing problems, pricing in shared vehicle systems is
more challenging due to network externalities, wherein setting prices at one
demand node may affect the supply at all other nodes in the network. Our
framework provides efficient algorithms with rigorous approximation guarantees
for a wide class of objective functions (including welfare and revenue, and also
multi-objective problems such as Ramsey pricing), and under a variety of
constraints on the prices. We achieve our guarantees by first projecting the
problem to an infinite-supply setting, deriving optimal prices in this limit, and
then bounding the performance of these prices in the finite-vehicle system; this
technique may be of independent interest since it applies even more generally
than the pricing problems that we consider.
4 - Managing Queues With A Self-scheduling Capacity
Rouba Ibrahim, University College London,
Randomness in the number of servers often arises in practice, e.g., in virtual call
centres with self-scheduling agents. We study the problem of staffing queueing
systems with a random number of servers and impatient and costly customers.
We characterize the optimal staffing policy and formulate related insights.
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203A-MCC
Sports and Entertainment
Contributed Session
Chair: Kristopher Pruitt, Associate Professor, United States Air Force
Academy, 2354 Fairchild Dr, Ste 6D222, USAFA, CO, 80840,
United States,
1 - Analysis Of World Baseball Softball Confederation
Premier 12 Schedule
Seong Dae Kim, Associate Professor, University of Alaska
Anchorage, 3211 Providence Drive, University Center, Room 155,
Anchorage, AK, 99508, United States, ,
J.C. Kim
World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) created the Premier12
tournament featuring the twelve best-ranked national baseball teams in the
world. The first tournament was held in Taiwan and Japan in 2015. Questions
were raised about the fairness of factors that can affect the team performance and
the game result. This study analyzes the game schedule and other factors that
might have unfairly affected the tournament and propose a better balanced
schedule by formulating it as an OR problem. This study also discusses on what
could have been done differently do make the tournament more successful.
2 - The Role Of Offensive System In The NBA Draft
Ryan Chen, Stanford University, 227 Ayrshire Farm Lane, Apt.
301B, Stanford, CA, 94305, United States, ,
Eli Shayer, Travis Chen, Nicholas Canova
NBA teams look for every possible tool to help them decide which players to draft
each year, avoiding “bust” players who perform much worse than expected and
seeking out star players to become cornerstones of great teams. We propose an
addition to this set of tools, using data describing the draft prospects’ collegiate
offensive systems to understand why players tend to outperform or underperform
relative to their expected draft position and associated Win Shares. Our key
contribution is a cluster analysis that shows the offensive play type distributions
associated with star and bust players at each of the 5 on-court positions.
3 - Using Past Scores And Regularization To Create A Winning
NFL Betting Model
Eric Webb, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University,
Bloomington, IN, 47404, United States,
Wayne L Winston
Is the National Football League betting market efficient? We have devised a
profitable betting model that would win 52.7% of the 7,705 bets against the
spread it would have made over 34 seasons. Scores from previous weeks are used
to estimate the point value of each team’s offense and defense. These values
predict next week’s scores, and a bet is placed against the advertised spread. The
sum of squares of offensive/defensive point values are constrained to be less than
a regularization constant.
4 - An Optimal Pacing Strategy For Ultramarathons
Kristopher Pruitt, Associate Professor, United States Air Force
Academy, 2354 Fairchild Dr, Ste 6D222, USAFA, CO, 80840,
United States, , Justin Hill
We present an optimization model designed to prescribe ideal pacing and
nutrition strategies for athletes competing in ultramarathon races. The mixed-
integer nonlinear program determines the level-of-effort and carbohydrate intake
for the athlete during each kilometer in order to minimize the total completion
time subject to the altitude, terrain, and distance of the race, as well as the fitness
of the athlete. Our presentation includes modeling techniques required to
linearize the problem and a numerical case study.
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203B-MCC
Procurement & Purchasing Management
Contributed Session
Chair: Vandit Shah, California State University - Fullerton,
Fullerton, CA, United States,
1 - Geography Still Matters: Examine The Role Of Location In Online
Markets For Foreign Branded Products
Xia Zhao, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, 479 Bryan Building, PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC,
27402, United States, , Kexin Zhao, Jing Deng
Internet technologies and e-commerce have significantly reduced communication
costs and facilitated trade between distant parties. Conventional wisdom holds
that the world becomes flat and geographic divisions are gradually irrelevant. This
study investigates whether and how geographic location affects online sellers’
pricing strategies and sales for foreign branded products using a large data set
collected from a brand owner’s website and an e-commerce retail platform. Our
research provides empirical evidences that origin bias exists and geography still
matters in the online platform.
2 - Value For Money Assessment Using Fuzzy Logic
Deepak Kanhaiyalal Sharma, Assistant Professor, California State
University - Fullerton, 800 N State College Blvd, Dept. of
Civil & Environmental Eng., Fullerton, CA, 92831, United States,
, Baig Jufain Mirza
Value for Money (VfM) assessment is the gateway analysis for adopting the Public
Private Partnerships (PPPs) for project delivery. Review shows that PPPs have
evolved significantly but the VfM assessment has remained almost unchanged.
Throughout the world, practitioners and researchers have voiced their concerns
about the limitations of VfM assessment. Fuzzy Logic (FL) enables decision
makers to assign degrees of truthfulness on the basis of “awareness” of the
qualitative part of VfM and getting a single comprehensive VfM result. Using a
case study this research also presents use of fuzzy decision analysis tools to
supplement the existing VfM practice.
3 - Decision Science Tools For Value For Money (vfm) Analysis
Deepak Kanhaiyalal Sharma, California State University -
Fullerton, 800 N State College Blvd, Dept. of Civil &
Environmental Eng., Fullerton, CA, 92831, United States,
, Vandit Shah, Baig Mirza
Value for Money (VfM) assessment is the gateway analysis that allows use of
Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) for project delivery. Review shows that PPPs
have evolved significantly but the VfM assessment has remained almost
unchanged, mandating enhancement of the process. This research presents
application of Bayesian Networks (BN), Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Data Envelopment
Analysis (DEA) to supplement the VfM by seamlessly integrating the qualitative
and quantitative results of the assessment. A case study has been included to
demonstrate the application of these methods along with advantages and
disadvantages of each method.
4 - Contracting For Services In Multiple Industries:
An Empirical Analysis
Yuan Ye, PhD Candidate, University of Houston, 4800 Calhoun Rd,
Houston, TX, 77004, United States,
David Xiaosong Peng
Service contracting is a prevalent business practice to reduce costs, improve
quality, access external knowledge and enhance innovation. Yet, many services
are highly specialized or unique, making service contracting a challenge for both
the buyer and the supplier. Based on the strategic sourcing processing, we
develop an empirical study to investigate the practices in service contracting. We
intend to benchmark the practices in different industries (e.g., healthcare, oil and
gas, and manufacturing) and identify the best practices that drive success
outcomes in service contracting.
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