Using Information on Unconstrained Student Demand to Improve University Course Schedules

We examine how using information on unconstrained demand can improve operational decisions. Specifically, we examine the widespread problem of developing course schedules in not-for-profit university settings. We investigate the potential benefit of incorporating, into the scheduling process, information on the unconstrained demand of students for courses. Prior to this study, the status quo in our college, like that in a large proportion of university settings, was building the course schedule to avoid time conflicts between required courses and to minimize time conflicts between designated groups of courses, such as electives in a particular area. Compared to the status quo approach, we find that, based on three semester's worth of actual data, an approach that explicitly considers students’ course preferences improves a student-based metric of schedule quality on the order of over 4% (which is the equivalent, in our setting, of improving service for over 20% of students).

Labor Scheduling Using NPV Estimates of the Marginal Benefit of Additional Labor Capacity

An extensive literature exists on the problems of daily (shift) and weekly (tour) labor scheduling. In representing requirements for employees in these problems, researchers have used formulations based either on the model of Dantzig (1954) or on the model of Keith (1979). We show that both formulations have weakness in environments where management knows, or can attempt to identify, how different levels of customer service affect profits. These weaknesses results in lower-than-necessary profits. This paper presents a New Formulation of the daily and weekly Labor Scheduling Problems (NFLSP) designed to overcome the limitations of earlier models. NFLSP incorporates information on how changing the number of employees working in each planning period affects profits. NFLP uses this information during the development of the schedule to identify the number of employees who, ideally, should be working in each period. In an extensive simulation of 1,152 service environments, NFLSP outperformed the formulations of Dantzig (1954) and Keith (1979) at a level of significance of 0.001. Assuming year-round operations and an hourly wage, including benefits, of $6.00, NFLSP's schedules were $96,046 (2.2%) and $24,648 (0.6%) more profitable, on average, than schedules developed using the formulations of Danzig (1954) and Keith (1979), respectively. Although the average percentage gain over Keith's model was fairly small, it could be much larger in some real cases with different parameters. In 73 and 100 percent of the cases we simulated NFLSP yielded a higher profit than the models of Keith (1979) and Danzig (1954), respectively.

Production planning, pricing and market coordination for news vendor problem with price dependent demand

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Essays on Omnichannel Sale

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Práticas interdisciplinares no ensino superior: a experiência do curso de graduação em administração da UNAMA - Pará

This work addresses the study of interdisciplinarity in higher administration education, a topic of great relevance in the present context, due to guidelines issued by Ministry of Education through the National Curriculum Guidelines -NCGs for undergraduate courses in Management. The attention on the subject emerges from the gained experience of a researcher and teacher working as manager of an undergraduate course in Business Administration who set up interdisciplinarity through interdisciplinary projects in a management course pedagogical project at a private university in State of Pará/Brazil. The work rebuilds and reports experiences, and studies the practice of lecturers involved in those interdisciplinary actions. The study aimed to identify changes in pedagogical practices of teachers involved in the searched interdisciplinary experience. To address the questions that directed the work and achieve proposed objectives, from a qualitative approach, a significant bibliographical and documentary work was conducted on the topic. In the survey carried out on secondary sources such as publications of major authors and scientific papers reporting interdisciplinary experiences in higher administration education, it was found that interdisciplinarity for its ambiguous character is still poorly understood by teachers, and reports on its application in administration teaching are incipient. This study also used data collected from primary sources, from dialogues through interviews with educational fellows - teachers and officers of the institution that served as locus of the research, who had the opportunity to experience the studied interdisciplinary experience. Data were processed and analyzed using content analysis technique. Research results showed that teachers of the institution of research have a good understanding of meaning of interdisciplinarity as a link between disciplines; it was also found substantial evidence of changes in teaching practices and actions of such teachers based on their participation in interdisciplinary projects. Although the experience studied can be considered innovative and challenging, much needs to be done in the course management for achievement of interdisciplinary actions in the course, particularly regarding to the removal of institutional, methodological, psychosocial, epistemological obstacles in operationalizing interdisciplinary practices, with emphasis on the need of a process of continuous and specific training aiming at developing skills for interdisciplinary acting, to the extent that these education professionals do not perceive themselves able to act as interdisciplinary lecturers

ASSESSING QUALITY IN HIGH-UNCERTAINTY MARKETS: ONLINE REVIEWS OF CREDENCE SERVICES

In economics of information theory, credence products are those whose quality is difficult or impossible for consumers to assess, even after they have consumed the product (Darby & Karni, 1973). This dissertation is focused on the content, consumer perception, and power of online reviews for credence services. Economics of information theory has long assumed, without empirical confirmation, that consumers will discount the credibility of claims about credence quality attributes. The same theories predict that because credence services are by definition obscure to the consumer, reviews of credence services are incapable of signaling quality. Our research aims to question these assumptions. In the first essay we examine how the content and structure of online reviews of credence services systematically differ from the content and structure of reviews of experience services and how consumers judge these differences. We have found that online reviews of credence services have either less important or less credible content than reviews of experience services and that consumers do discount the credibility of credence claims. However, while consumers rationally discount the credibility of simple credence claims in a review, more complex argument structure and the inclusion of evidence attenuate this effect. In the second essay we ask, “Can online reviews predict the worst doctors?” We examine the power of online reviews to detect low quality, as measured by state medical board sanctions. We find that online reviews are somewhat predictive of a doctor’s suitability to practice medicine; however, not all the data are useful. Numerical or star ratings provide the strongest quality signal; user-submitted text provides some signal but is subsumed almost completely by ratings. Of the ratings variables in our dataset, we find that punctuality, rather than knowledge, is the strongest predictor of medical board sanctions. These results challenge the definition of credence products, which is a long-standing construct in economics of information theory. Our results also have implications for online review users, review platforms, and for the use of predictive modeling in the context of information systems research.

Future consumers’ perceptions of sustainability, and their reflections on buying decisions

The purpose of this quantitative study is to study future consumers’ perception of sustainability in relation to business in general and specifically concerning the forest industry. The aim is to understand, what they feel is important for sustainable business and how the forest industry, in their opinion, is performing in this respect. Further, it aims to study how these perceptions reflect in their buying decisions. The research was conducted by a quantitative survey in two countries, Finland and Hong Kong, in the spring of 2015. All data used in the research is primary. The result indicate that consumers see sustainability issues important today and in the future. Sustainability is seen important both for business in general for the forest industry. The industry is considered sustainable now, but room for improvements exists. The appreciation of sustainability does not reflect to buying decisions, however. The buying of ecological products seems to be more up to chance than to intention. Consumers are not proactive in searching for more ecological or responsible options. Information needs to be taken to them. Ecologicalness as such is still not a strong selling point.

Customer Support, Motivation to participate and participation in services : a first step.

International audience

LIVE-Fab – CNC-Programmierung und Montageplanung in einer virtuellen Lernfabrik. Konzepte, Grundlagen, Technik, Anwendung

Am Institut für Arbeitswissenschaft und Betriebsorganisation (ifab) Universität Karlsruhe wird zurzeit das Projekt LIVE-Fab (Lernen in der virtuellen Fabrik) gemeinsam mit der Fachhochschule Landshut, Fachbereich Maschinenbau, durchgeführt. Dieses Projekt wird vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) im Rahmen des Programms „Neue Medien in der Bildung“ gefördert. Das Ziel des Projektes ist die Entwicklung eines anschaulichen Lehr- und Lernmodells für eine Fabrik als funktionierendes Ganzes. Dazu soll im Rechner eine Modellfabrik mit den Bereichen Wareneingang, Fertigung, Montage und Qualitätssicherung abgebildet werden. Die Fabrik mit ihren Anlagen (Maschinen, Transportsysteme etc.) und Materialflüsse soll in einem 3D-Modell visuell erfassbar sein. Die Grundlagen zur Schaffung einer virtuell funktionierenden Produktion einschließlich Anlagenplanung, Arbeitsvorbereitung, die Mechanismen, Kundenbestellungen und Qualitätsmanagement sollen in einzelnen Fallstudien den Studierenden vermittelt werden. Den Studierenden aus den Fachbereichen Maschinenbau, Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen, Elektrotechnik und Betriebswirtschaft mit technischer Ausrichtung soll mit der virtuellen Fabrik ein Werkzeug an die Hand gegeben werden, mit dem sie die komplexen, ineinander verzahnten Vorgänge eines Produktionsprozesses besser verstehen lernen. Dies bedeutet, dass in der virtuellen Fabrik die inhaltlichen Aspekte mehrerer vorgelagerter Vorlesungen kombiniert werden und dadurch ein Verbund zum Verständnis der Produktionsprozesse geschaffen wird.(DIPF/Orig.)

Expected rates of return to education / BEBR No. 832

Bibliography: p. 23-25.

Discourses and practices regarding low-carbon strategy: the case of French integrated retailers

International audience

Transition to Product Service Systems: methodology based on scenarios identification, modelling and evaluation

Part 4: Transition Towards Product-Service Systems

Interorganizational Innovation: The Role of Suppliers in Enhancing Buyer Innovation

This dissertation explores the effect of innovative knowledge transfer across supply chain partners. My research seeks to understand the manner by which a firm is able to benefit from the innovative capabilities of its supply chain partners and utilize the external knowledge they hold to increase its own levels of innovation. Specifically, I make use of patent data as a proxy for firm-level innovation and develop both independent and dependent variables from the data contained within the patent filings. I further examine the means by which key dyadic and portfolio supply chain relationship characteristics moderate the relationship between supplier innovation and buyer innovation. I investigate factors such as the degree of transactional reciprocity between the buyer and supplier, the similarity of the firms’ knowledge bases, and specific chain characteristics (e.g., geographic propinquity) to provide greater understanding of the means by which the transfer of innovative knowledge across firms in a supply chain can be enhanced or inhibited. This dissertation spans three essays to provide insights into the role that supply chain relationships play in affecting a focal firm’s level of innovation. While innovation has been at the core of a wide body of research, very little empirical work exists that considers the role of vertical buyer-supplier relationships on a firm’s ability to develop new and novel innovations. I begin by considering the fundamental unit of analysis within a supply chain, the buyer-supplier dyad. After developing initial insights based on the interactions between singular buyers and suppliers, essay two extends the analysis to consider the full spectrum of a buyer’s supply base by aggregating the individual buyer-supplier dyad level data into firm-supply network level data. Through this broader level of analysis, I am able to examine how the relational characteristics between a buyer firm and its supply base affect its ability to leverage the full portfolio of its suppliers’ innovative knowledge. Finally, in essay three I further extend the analysis to explore the means by which a buyer firm can use its suppliers to enhance its ability to access distant knowledge held by other organizations that the buyer is only connected to indirectly through its suppliers.

Entrepreneurial Orientation: do we actually know as much as we think we do?

International audience

UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER CHOICES IN SERVICE OUTSOURCING AND REVENUE MANAGEMENT

This dissertation investigates customer behavior modeling in service outsourcing and revenue management in the service sector (i.e., airline and hotel industries). In particular, it focuses on a common theme of improving firms’ strategic decisions through the understanding of customer preferences. Decisions concerning degrees of outsourcing, such as firms’ capacity choices, are important to performance outcomes. These choices are especially important in high-customer-contact services (e.g., airline industry) because of the characteristics of services: simultaneity of consumption and production, and intangibility and perishability of the offering. Essay 1 estimates how outsourcing affects customer choices and market share in the airline industry, and consequently the revenue implications from outsourcing. However, outsourcing decisions are typically endogenous. A firm may choose whether to outsource or not based on what a firm expects to be the best outcome. Essay 2 contributes to the literature by proposing a structural model which could capture a firm’s profit-maximizing decision-making behavior in a market. This makes possible the prediction of consequences (i.e., performance outcomes) of future strategic moves. Another emerging area in service operations management is revenue management. Choice-based revenue systems incorporate discrete choice models into traditional revenue management algorithms. To successfully implement a choice-based revenue system, it is necessary to estimate customer preferences as a valid input to optimization algorithms. The third essay investigates how to estimate customer preferences when part of the market is consistently unobserved. This issue is especially prominent in choice-based revenue management systems. Normally a firm only has its own observed purchases, while those customers who purchase from competitors or do not make purchases are unobserved. Most current estimation procedures depend on unrealistic assumptions about customer arriving. This study proposes a new estimation methodology, which does not require any prior knowledge about the customer arrival process and allows for arbitrary demand distributions. Compared with previous methods, this model performs superior when the true demand is highly variable.