Sunday

SA32
2 - Planning Product Availability for an Assortment of Vertically
Differentiated Products
Yalcin Akcay, Koc University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, Istanbul, Turkey,
yakcay@ku.edu.tr, Hari Natarajan
In many industries, firms offer a variety of substitutable products that customers
can choose from. Because product demands are inter-related, managers must
determine inventory policies jointly. Considering the case of a verticallydifferentiated
product assortment, we model and analyze the problem of
determining the optimal inventory policy for a product assortment.
3 - Dynamic Pricing with Strategic Customers under Price
Adjustment Policy
Boxiao (Beryl) Chen, University of Michigan, 1205 Beal Avenue,
Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States of America,
boxchen@umich.edu, Xiuli Chao, Hyun-Soo Ahn
We study the dynamic pricing strategy of a monopolist serving heterogeneous
forward-looking customers. The firm offers a price adjustment policy, which
guarantees current buyers a full refund of the difference if they find a lower
future price within a certain time window. We establish the existence of a
subgame perfect equilibrium pricing policy and show that the firm sets different
equilibrium pricing patterns in different regions of system parameters.
4 - Assortment Planning in Multiple Selling Channels
Yiqiang Su, Phd Candidate, University of Florida, Department of
Industrial and Systems Eng, 450 Weil Hall, Gainesville, FL, 32607,
United States of America, ysu1987@ufl.edu, Joseph Geunes
In this research, we consider a clicks-and-mortar retailer who sells goods to endcustomers
through both physical and virtual (e-commerce) channels. The retailer
has limited capacity, and would like to determine the set of products to offer, both
in the local and online stores to maximize its profit from sales during a single
selling season. MNL and Exogenous demand models are used to capture the
customer choice behaviors, and a chance-constrained two stage model is built to
solve this problem.
■ SA32
32- North 223- CC
Quality Control and Learning in Manufacturing
Contributed Session
Chair: Gabriel Burnett, The Boeing Company, P.O. Box 3707,
MC 13-98, Seattle, WA, 98124, United States of America,
gabriel.a.burnett@boeing.com
1 - Changing the Paradigm for Education in Quality
Thong Goh, Professor, National University of Singapore,
1 Engineering Dr 2, Blk E1A #06-25, Singapore, 117576,
Singapore, isegohtn@nus.edu.sg
Quality education has been “customer oriented” for many decades. Some ideas
and techniques have become outmoded in the modern society. It is time that
some paradigm shift was made in quality management education. This needs to
be realized soon if the new generation of quality practioners are to find
themselves relevant.
2 - A Hybrid Inspection Strategy for Rapid Deployment of
Automated Inspection Technology
Patrick Spicer, General Motors, General Motors R&D Center,
Warren, MI, 48093, United States of America,
patrick.spicer@gm.com, Mike Wincek, Jeffrey Abell, Hui Wang
New manufacturing processes for advanced automotive propulsion systems (i.e.
batteries or fuel cells) may not have well-developed automated inspection
technologies at first. In this presentation, a hybrid inspection strategy is described
that enables a manufacturer to begin with human inspection and gradually
phase-in automated inspection technology until the inspection task is completely
automated. This strategy has been successfully implemented in an automotive
assembly plant.
3 - Continuous Improvement in Cellular Manufacturing: The Case
of an Electronics Manufacturer in Japan
Tomoaki Shimada, Associate Professor of Operations Management,
Kobe University, 2-1 Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe, 657-8501,
Japan, shimada@b.kobe-u.ac.jp, James Ang, Hisashi Kurata
This study is case-based research that analyzes continuous improvement in
cellular manufacturing at an IC recorder manufacturing plant in Japan. The study
provides practical insight into how to make an effort to improve the productivity
of one-worker cellular production over time. The implementation results indicate
that workers reduced the takt time by about 19%, and confirm that continuous
improvement plays an important role in cellular manufacturing from the
perspective of human dimensions.
INFORMS Phoenix – 2012
66
4 - Investigation of Learning Curves in Production Systems
Gabriel Burnett, The Boeing Company, P.O. Box 3707, MC 13-98,
Seattle, WA, 98124, United States of America,
gabriel.a.burnett@boeing.com, Adam Graunke
We investigate the behavior of learning curves in the context of large scale
production systems. Learning curves are used extensively when planning
production systems. We demonstrate the implications of a variety of commonly
held assumptions. We then provide an empirical study to analyze which events
(i.e. rate breaks, technology insertion, derivative products, etc) create a significant
departure from the global learning curve and how such events could be modeled
in the future.
■ SA33
33- North 224 A- CC
Sustainable and Responsible Operations
Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt/Sustainable
Operations
Sponsored Session
Chair: Jose Cruz, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut,
School of Business, Storrs, CT, 06269, United States of America,
jose.cruz@business.uconn.edu
1 - Closed-loop Supply Chain with Quality Differentiation
Patrick Qiang, Assistant Professor, Pennsylvania State University,
Great Valley, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America,
qzq10@gv.psu.edu
We model the CLSC that captures consumer’s heterogeneous valuation on the
remanufactured product and the new product. The model captures the interaction
among various players, including manufacturers, retailers, and consumers.
Numerical examples are used to provide managerial implications.
2 - A Dynamic Model to Study Sustainable Business Policies in a
Closed Loop Supply Chain
Sudip Bhattacharjee, Associate Professor, University of
Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States of America,
sbhattacharjee@business.uconn.edu, Jose Cruz
The sustainability of a closed loop supply chain depends on the economic viability
of all actors in the chain. We model the phenomenon analytically and create
dynamic models to study key factors that impact profitability of partners in the
chain. We find that product design, marketing and related actions of up-market
producers significantly influence the ability of down-market recyclers to survive.
We discuss environmental and revenue implications of several policy scenarios.
3 - Operationalizing Sustainable Production Strategies Subject to
Diminishing Resources
Manuel Nunez, Associate Professor, School of Business, UConn,
2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041, Storrs, CT, 06269, United States of
America, mnunez@business.uconn.edu, Hsiao-Hui Lee
We develop a two-stage dynamic model to analyze different sustainability
strategic decisions such as starting a recycling program or developing alternative
technologies to replace a diminishing resource. We investigate the impact of the
parameters on the optimal decision and discuss how to operationalize the
decisions in the supply chain.
4 - Mitigating Global Supply Chain Risks through Corporate
Social Responsibility
Jose Cruz, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut,
School of Business, Storrs, CT, 06269, United States of America,
jose.cruz@business.uconn.edu
We develop a decision model that captures supply side disruption risks, social
risks, and demand side uncertainty within an integrated global supply chain and
corporate social responsibility (CSR) modeling and analysis framework. We
investigate the effects of CSR activities in a global supply chain and compute the
equilibrium product flows, prices, and levels of social responsibility activities. The
results show that CSR activities can potentially be used to mitigate global supply
chain risk.