2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

WA29

INFORMS Nashville – 2016

2 - Deployment Guidelines For Community Health Workers In Sub-saharan Africa Jonas Jonasson, London Business School, London, United Kingdom, jjonasson@london.edu, Carri Chan, Sarang Deo, Jeremie Gallien Community health workers (CHWs) are increasingly important to the delivery of health care in many African countries. Leveraging an extensive dataset featuring time, clinical findings and GPS information for CHW visits in Ghana, we develop a stochastic model describing the health dynamics of a population served by a time-constrained CHW. This model supports the design of managerial guidelines for patient prioritization and catchment area assignment in a CHW operation. 3 - Global Vehicle Supply Chains In Humanitarian Operations: A Network Analysis Approach Jon M. Stauffer, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States, jstauffer@mays.tamu.edu, Alfonso J Pedraza- Martinez, Lu Yan We examine the vehicle supply chain network structure of the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) as they respond to a mega disaster while continuing to support development programs and minor disasters. Using Exponential Random Graph Models, we examine the significance of the vehicle supply chain network changes year-to-year. Results show that temporary hubs are utilized in mega disaster locations and that supply chain support for areas outside the mega disaster region, while present, is reduced. This allows us to better understand how all supply chain networks could improve their response to large disruptions. 4 - Assessing The Impact Of Network Vulnerability On Relief Distribution Operations Considering Social Costs Miguel Jaller, University of California Davis, mjaller@ucdavis.edu, Luis Fernando Macea, Victor Cantillo This paper develops a model to asses the impacts that network vulnerability can have on the distribution of critical supplies after a disaster. The model estimates the changes in total social costs due to stochastic network disruptions. The analyses are based on the difference between the logsum, which measures the changes in consumer surplus or benefits, before and after the failure. In addition, the model allows identifying the critical links in a network from the critical response perspective. WA29 202A-MCC Operations with Social Impact Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Sustainable Operations Sponsored Session Chair: Deishin Lee, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, United States, deishin.lee@bc.edu 1 - Dynamic Staffing Of Volunteer Gleaning Operations Erkut Sonmez, Assistant Professor, Boston College, Carroll School Gleaning refers to collecting food from what is left in the fields after harvest, and donating the goods to food bank or pantries that serve food insecure individuals. In this paper we study a dynamic control problem for volunteer capacity management of gleaning operations. 2 - Strategic Commitment To A Production Schedule With Supply And Demand Uncertainty: Renewable Energy In Day-ahead Electricity Markets Nur Sunar, UNC at Chapel Hill, nur_sunar@kenan-flagler.unc.edu, John R Birge Motivated by fast penetration of variable renewable energy (such as wind and solar energy) into the electricity generation mix, we study a day-ahead electricity market that consists of finitely many competing firms, each facing supply uncertainty. In electricity markets, the purpose of an undersupply penalty is to improve reliability by motivating each firm to commit to a production schedule it can deliver in the production stage. Using differential equations theory, we prove that imposing or increasing a market-based undersupply penalty rate can result in a strictly lower equilibrium reliability with probability 1. (Joint work with John Birge) of Management, Boston College, Fulton Hall, Office 350D, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467, United States, sonmeze@bc.edu, Baris Ata, Deishin Lee

3 - Distributed Renewable-energy Generation And Implications For Strategic Consumer Behavior, Electricity Pricing And Installed Capacity Alex Angelus, UT Dallas, Alexandar.Angelus@utdallas.edu We propose a continuous-time model of electricity markets, in which heterogeneous consumers can purchase and install their own renewable-energy generators, such as solar panels, and thus reduce electricity consumption from the local utility. We analyze both in-the-grid and off-the grid scenarios. The optimal time to install distributed generation follows a threshold policy on customer demand. We derive explicit expressions for the threshold level and optimal distributed generation to install, and determine the optimal price the utility should charge to maximize its revenue. Contrary to the prevailing industry practice, higher electricity prices can lead to lower revenues for the utility. 4 - Converting Retail Food Waste Into By-product Mustafa H Tongarlak, Bogazici University, istanbul, Turkey, tongarlak@boun.edu.tr, Deishin Lee By-product synergy (BPS) is a form of joint production that uses the waste stream from one (primary) process as useful input into another (secondary) process. The synergy is derived from avoiding waste disposal cost in the primary process and virgin raw material cost in the secondary process. We investigate how BPS can mitigate food waste in a retail grocer setting, and how it interacts with other mechanisms for reducing waste (i.e., waste disposal fee and tax credit for food donation). We also present a hybrid approach to implementing BPS that preserves managerial autonomy. WA30 202B-MCC Joint Session HAS/MSOM-HC: Patient Flow Analytics Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt/HAS Healthcare Operations Sponsored Session Chair: Nan Liu, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States, nl2320@columbia.edu Co-Chair: Zhankun Sun, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada, zhankun.sun@haskayne.ucalgary.ca 1 - Models For Hospital Inpatient Operations: A Data Driven Optimization Approach For Reducing ED Boarding Times Shasha Han, National University of Singapore, shashahan@u.nus.edu, Shuangchi He, Hong Choon Oh The long ED boarding times are a threat to most public hospitals. To tackle this problem, we examine datasets from a public hospital in Singapore and propose a data-driven approach to optimizing bed assignments. Our formulation incorporates practical features conventionally absent from the queueing control framework. With a slightly increased overflow proportion, it can greatly reduce the mean boarding times as well as the percentage of them exceeding given targets. It also helps to resolve the time-of-day effect of boarding times, which results from routine discharge procedures in hospitals. Interestingly, we show there exists an optimal solution that is fair to patients within each category. 2 - An Empirical Study Of Adding Physician Assistants To Critical Care Consultation Teams Yunchao Xu, New York University, yxu4@stern.nyu.edu, Mor Armony, Carri Chan, Michelle Gong Physician assistants (PAs) can sometimes be cost-effective alternatives to physicians in healthcare systems, but their impact on critical care delivery remains unclear. Over the course of 18 months, PAs were added to the Critical Care Consultation team at a major urban hospital system. In new multi-period analysis, we empirically measure the impact of part-time versus full-time PA coverage. We find that adding PAs can reduce the average time-to-transfer for all ICU patients and reduce mortality risk for low-severity patients. Interestingly, we do not find evidence that the benefits of having PAs further improves patient outcomes when adding PAs on non-weekdays. 3 - Predicting Triage Standing Orders Han Ye, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, hanye@illinois.edu, Zhankun Sun, Haipeng Shen Overcrowding in emergency department (ED) has become a major problem worldwide. In order to mitigate ED overcrowding, we explore the potential of triage nurse ordering by developing models for predicting test orders using detailed information available at the triage stage. We then study the impact and trade-off of such predictive models in ED patient flows and patient outcomes.

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