2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

TB87

INFORMS Nashville – 2016

TB87 Broadway A-Omni Community-Based Operations Research II Sponsored: Public Sector OR Sponsored Session Chair: Michael P. Johnson, Univrsity of Massachusetts, Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, Boston, MA, 3, United States, Michael.Johnson@umb.edu 1 - The Foodbank Compliance Problem: A Multicriteria Vehicle Routing Approach Sarah Nurre, University of Arkansas, snurre@uark.edu, Kellie Schneider Over 49 million Americans do not have access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. To address the issue of food insecurity in our area, our food bank services many agencies that provide emergency food relief. To maintain regulatory compliance, each agency receives an audit every 12-18 months. We formulate the Food Bank Compliance problem as a multicriteria vehicle routing problem to investigate trade-offs between multiple objectives. We solve the model using both exact and heuristic approaches and provide solutions that appease various stakeholders in the community. 2 - How Can Value Elicitation In Adult Basic Education Support Learners’ Success In Goal-setting Policy? Alma Biba, University of Florida, Jacksonville, FL, United States, Alma.Biba@jax.ufl.edu, Michael P Johnson For the last two decades, federal legislation and Massachusetts’ state ABE policies have linked adult learners’ educational outcomes to accountability requirements. Using a multi-method approach ABE learners’ goal setting was presented as a decision problem in order to reveal and disentangle the conflicting preferences fueled by outcome-based accountability requirements. Elicitation of values using value-focused thinking (VFT) methodology revealed that learner’s self-defined goals are consistently distinct from program-defined goals, that teachers recognize this disjunction, and that efforts to reconcile the two could yield significant improvements in ABE program outcomes. 3 - From Spatial Swot Analysis To Mcda And Choice Experiments: An Integrated Approach For Historical Heritage Management In A New World Heritage Site Valentina Ferretti, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom, V.Ferretti@lse.ac.uk, Elisa Gandino This study develops a multi-methodology intervention designed and deployed to support planning and management of a new World Heritage site in Italy. The proposed framework develops through subsequent phases and experiments an integrated approach based on mixed Decision and Economic Analysis techniques, i.e. Spatial SWOT Analysis and Multicriteria Decision Aiding in Phase 1 (problem identification - knowledge phase), Stakeholders Analysis and Spatial Multicriteria Decision Aiding in Phase 2 (problem formulation - planning phase), and Choice Experiments during Phase 3 (problem solving - design). 4 - Mobile Dentistry Network Design: Improving Dental Care Access For Under-served Populations In Rural Regions Ronald McGarvey, University of Missouri, IMSE and TSPA, E3437D Lafferre Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211, United States, mcgarveyr@missouri.edu, Andreas Holger Thorsen We investigate the implications of adding mobile dentistry services to a community health center (CHC) in southwest Montana. CHCs are not-for-profit healthcare corporations which provide comprehensive primary care services to patients in the US, including under-served and uninsured people. Mobile dentistry involves dentists and dental hygienists traveling with dental equipment in vans or trailers to serve patients. We model the mobile dentistry network design problem using a mixed-integer programming model to assess the financial feasibility of offering a mobile dentistry service in southwest Montana and measure the potential social impact of mobile dentistry on the region.

TB88 Broadway B-Omni Service Science Best Student Paper Competition II Award Session Chair: Robin Qiu, Penn State University, 30 E. Swedesford Road, Malvern, PA, 19355, United States, robinqiu@psu.edu 1 - Appointment Scheduling And The Effects Of Customer Congestion on Service Zheng Zhang, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, zzhang0409@gmail.com, Zheng Zhang, Brian Denton, Xiaolin Xie This paper addresses an appointment scheduling problem in which the server responds to congestion of the service system. We characterize the congestion induced behavior of the server as a function of customer waiting time. Decision variables are the scheduled arrival times for customers in order to minimize a weighted cost incurred for customer waiting time, server overtime and server speedup in response to congestion. We illustrate the importance of congestion effects using a case study for an outpatient clinic at a large medical center. 2 - Managing Consumer Return Abuse And an Assessment Of Technology-Enabled Countermeasures Mustafa Serkan Akturk, Texas A&M University, 4217 TAMU, Wehner 320 M, College Station, TX, 77843-4217, United States, makturk@mays.tamu.edu, Michael Ketzenberg This paper examines retail return abuse with respect to both opportunistic and fraudulent consumer returns and explores two innovative technology-enabled countermeasures: customer profiling and product tracking. A customer profiling system identifies opportunistic customers by using their personal identification and transaction history. In contrast, a product tracking system identifies fraudulent returns by recording each transaction of a product through the use of unique identifiers. We investigate the value of making such investments and evaluate how these countermeasures impact a retailer’s profitability, demand structure, and policy parameters with respect to price and refund. 3 - Data-Driven Management Of Post-Transplant Medications: An APOMDP Approach Alireza Boloori, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States, alireza.boloori@asu.edu, Soroush Saghafian, Harini Chakkera, Curtiss Cook Anti-rejection drugs are heavily prescribed after organ transplantations to reduce the risk of organ rejections. However, this practice has been shown to increase the risk of diabetes, which makes patients insulin-dependent. To address this conflict and generate effective medication management strategies, we propose an ambiguous POMDP framework that accounts for (1) patients’ quality of lives, (2) inevitable estimation errors in a data-driven system, and (3) physicians’ attitudes in decision making. We also provide several managerial and medical implications for policy makers and physicians. 4 - Speedup And Slowdown In Multi-Class Service Systems With Returns Nasser Barjesteh, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago, IL, United States, barjesteh@chicagobooth.edu, Hossein Abouee-Mehrizi We consider a service system facing several classes of customers in which the arrival rate and service time depend on the workload, while the chance of return depends on the service time. We provide conditions under which the system is stable and characterize the equilibria of the system. We show that the system may shift between several equilibria. We demonstrate conditions under which an equilibrium is stable and prove that the stability of an equilibrium may depend on the time a customer spends outside of the system before returning for rework. We also observe that the congestion level at which the service rate of one class is changed affects the impact of adjusting the service rate of another class. 5 - Simulation Optimization For Medical Staff Configuration At Emergency Department In Hong Kong Hainan Guo, City University of Hong Kong, KLN, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, hainaguo-c@my.cityu.edu.hk, Siyang Gao, Kwok-Leung Tsui This paper seeks to solve the problem of minimizing the medical staff cost constrained by certain service requirements at ED in HK. In our formulation, the service requirements are characterized by some stochastic constraints. Due to the special structure of this problem and ease of computing the objective values, we proposed an efficient random search approach which iteratively identifies solutions with better objective values than that of the current best solution. Experimental studies demonstrate the significantly higher efficiency of our method. In order to obtain the same solution quality, it is able to reduce the computational time by 90% compared with the existing methods in the literature.

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