2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

SA53

INFORMS Nashville – 2016

3 - Information Dissemination Through Social Media In Humanitarian Operations

4 - Production And Distribution Capacity Planning For Mitigating Urban Delivery Risk Of E-commerce Mu Du, Dalian University of Technology, 509 School of Management, No.2 Linggong Road, Dalian, 116023, China, dumu.dlut@gmail.com, Nan Kong The integrated production and distribution capacity planning is vital to the supply chains of perishable commodity B2C e-commerce, which are keen on reducing production makespan and delivery lateness. However, significant challenge lies in the uncertain delivery workload caused by traffic control and adverse weather (e.g., smog) in Chinese urban areas. We formulate a two-stage stochastic programming model and propose a stochastic branch and bound algorithm. We report the impact of traffic control and adverse weather on the capacity planning decisions, confounded by other factors. SA53 Music Row 1- Omni Topics in Revenue Generation from Innovation Sponsored: Technology, Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship Sponsored Session Chair: Pascale Crama, Singapore Management University, 50 Stamford Road, Singapore, 178899, Singapore, pcrama@smu.edu.sg 1 - Retaining Capable New Employees: Role Of Strategic Interaction And The Learning Rate We study a two-sided game involving a firm and a newly hired employee whose capability is not initially known to either party. As the employee performs, both players learn and are presented with an option: the firm can terminate an incapable employee, and a capable employee can leave the firm for greater financial remuneration elsewhere. We examine the Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) termination strategies and payoffs that unfold. We report a counterintuitive result: slower learning can increase the equilibrium payoff for both parties. Our result identifies a nonfinancial way for firms to improve retention of highly capable employees and create a win-win situation for both parties. 2 - The Impact Of Valuation Heterogeneity And Network Structure On Equilibrium Prices In Supply Networks Alper Nakkas, Nova School of Business and Economics, Campus de Campolide, VAT - 506030636, Lisbon, 1099-032, Portugal, alper.nakkas@novasbe.pt, Yi Xu We study how valuation heterogeneity and network structure on equilibrium prices in supply networks by identifying the main factors that influence the equilibrium prices, trading pattern and surplus allocation in such networks. We also show what types of links can be added into a supply network to improve its competitiveness and/or efficiency. 3 - Signaling Product Quality Through A Trial Period Gulru Ozkan-Seely, University of Washington – Bothell, Bothell, WA, 98033, United States, gulru@uw.edu, Shouqiang Wang We evaluate a firm’s pricing and timing strategies when launching via a time- locked trial period a new product that has privately observable product quality. While the trial period allows consumers to learn about the product quality (a phenomenon we term a learning effect), a longer trial period increases the heterogeneity of consumers’ willingness-to-pay for the firm (a phenomenon we term a dispersion effect). The dispersion effect exacerbates the firm’s pricing difficulty and generates an informational cost, warranting a longer trial period as a credible signal of the firm’s superior product quality. In a key finding, we show Onesun Steve Yoo, University College London, London, United Kingdom, onesun.yoo@ucl.ac.uk, Dharma Kwon

Eunae Yoo, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States, eunae.yoo@asu.edu, Elliot Rabinovich, Bin Gu, William Rand, Mahyar Eftekhar For humanitarian operations, the distribution of information is critical to support the effective and efficient delivery of goods and services. Since social media facilitates real-time information sharing, humanitarian organizations have started leveraging these platforms to communicate with their stakeholders. Our research examines information diffusion patterns on social media during disasters, taking into account the underlying social network among users. From our results, we identify how humanitarian organizations can improve information propagation on social media in emergencies. 4 - Disaster Cycle Management: Matching Supply And Demand Of Social Support Through Social Media. Alfonso Pedraza-Martinez, Indiana University, alpedraz@indiana.edu, Lucy Yan We study information management during the disaster cycle. This research investigates the match of social support supply provided by organizations and social support demand from social media users during the stages of preparedness, response and early recovery. Using the case of Hurricane Sandy, 2012 we find a mismatch between supply and demand for social support and provide discussions on alleviating the mismatch. Moreover, we study how actionable operations management content posted by organizations affects their interaction with users through social media. Chair: Ebru Bish, Virginia Tech, Dept of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, United States, ebru@vt.edu 1 - The Probabilistic Independence Of Mass Killings In The United States Douglas M King, Lecturer, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, 117 Transportation Building, 104 S Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL, 61801, United States, dmking@illinois.edu, Sheldon Jacobson As mass killings are increasingly visible in media coverage, understanding patterns in their occurrence becomes increasingly important. This talk finds that the 300 mass killings taking place in the United States from 2006 to 2016, as documented by USA Today, have a temporal distribution indistinguishable from a homogeneous Poisson process. This result suggests that these events are independent in that the occurrence of one mass killing does not indicate whether another is imminent. 2 - Adaptive Array-based Screening For Heterogeneous Populations Hrayer Aprahamian, Virginia Tech, 250 Durham, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, United States, ahrayer@vt.edu, Ebru Korular Bish, Douglas R Bish Group (pooled) testing has seen many applications, especially in the context of public health, blood screening, and genetics. We consider a special form of group testing called “array-based testing,” which takes advantage of overlapping pools. We model an adaptive and informative testing scheme that considers important test and population characteristics, including imperfect tests, dilution effect, and heterogeneity in the population, and determine the structure of the optimal testing design and optimal assignment of the heterogeneous subjects to the pools. Our case study indicates that the proposed optimization-based model leads to a substantial improvement over current practices. 3 - Prevalence Estimation Through Pooled Testing Ngoc Nguyen, Virginia Tech, ntn@vt.edu, Ebru Korular Bish, Douglas R Bish Surveillance studies often rely on pooled testing in order to estimate the unknown prevalence rate of an infection or a genetic disorder. Utilizing larger pools reduces testing costs, but also leads to a loss of accuracy due to dilution effects. We develop a mathematical model that considers this trade-off and determines the optimal pool size as well as the optimal number of pools under resource constraints. Our case study shows that this optimization-based approach improves upon the accuracy of the prevalence rate estimate over current approaches. SA52 214-MCC Prevailing Issues in Public Sector OR Sponsored: Public Sector OR Sponsored Session

that a firm can use the price and the trial length as dual signals. 4 - An Experimental Study Of Idea Evaluation Process Zhijian Cui, IE Business School, Zhijian.cui@ie.edu

With an online experiment, this study compares the efficacy of two idea evaluation processes commonly observed in practice: ranking and scoring. We find that the scoring process has a higher evaluation accuracy than the ranking process. In addition, providing more information and domain-specific expertise could improve the evaluation accuracy of scoring process, but not the ranking process.

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