2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

WE32

INFORMS Nashville – 2016

3 - Pricing And Optimization In Shared-Vehicle Systems Siddhartha Banerjee, Cornell University, sbanerjee@cornell.edu We propose a framework for data-driven pricing in shared vehicle systems in which customers can pick up and drop off vehicles in different locations. Compared to traditional pricing problems, pricing in shared vehicle systems is more challenging due to network externalities, wherein setting prices at one demand node may affect the supply at all other nodes in the network. Our framework provides efficient algorithms with rigorous approximation guarantees for a wide class of objective functions (including welfare and revenue, and also multi-objective problems such as Ramsey pricing), and under a variety of constraints on the prices. We achieve our guarantees by first projecting the problem to an infinite-supply setting, deriving optimal prices in this limit, and then bounding the performance of these prices in the finite-vehicle system; this technique may be of independent interest since it applies even more generally than the pricing problems that we consider. 4 - Managing Queues With A Self-scheduling Capacity Rouba Ibrahim, University College London, rouba.ibrahim@ucl.ac.uk Randomness in the number of servers often arises in practice, e.g., in virtual call centres with self-scheduling agents. We study the problem of staffing queueing systems with a random number of servers and impatient and costly customers. We characterize the optimal staffing policy and formulate related insights. WE32 203A-MCC Sports and Entertainment Contributed Session Chair: Kristopher Pruitt, Associate Professor, United States Air Force Academy, 2354 Fairchild Dr, Ste 6D222, USAFA, CO, 80840, United States, kristopher.pruitt@gmail.com 1 - Analysis Of World Baseball Softball Confederation Premier 12 Schedule Seong Dae Kim, Associate Professor, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Drive, University Center, Room 155, Anchorage, AK, 99508, United States, sdkim2@uaa.alaska.edu, J.C. Kim World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) created the Premier12 tournament featuring the twelve best-ranked national baseball teams in the world. The first tournament was held in Taiwan and Japan in 2015. Questions were raised about the fairness of factors that can affect the team performance and the game result. This study analyzes the game schedule and other factors that might have unfairly affected the tournament and propose a better balanced schedule by formulating it as an OR problem. This study also discusses on what could have been done differently do make the tournament more successful. 2 - The Role Of Offensive System In The NBA Draft Ryan Chen, Stanford University, 227 Ayrshire Farm Lane, Apt. 301B, Stanford, CA, 94305, United States, rdchen@stanford.edu, Eli Shayer, Travis Chen, Nicholas Canova NBA teams look for every possible tool to help them decide which players to draft each year, avoiding “bust” players who perform much worse than expected and seeking out star players to become cornerstones of great teams. We propose an addition to this set of tools, using data describing the draft prospects’ collegiate offensive systems to understand why players tend to outperform or underperform relative to their expected draft position and associated Win Shares. Our key contribution is a cluster analysis that shows the offensive play type distributions associated with star and bust players at each of the 5 on-court positions. 3 - Using Past Scores And Regularization To Create A Winning NFL Betting Model Eric Webb, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 47404, United States, ermwebb@indiana.edu, Wayne L Winston Is the National Football League betting market efficient? We have devised a profitable betting model that would win 52.7% of the 7,705 bets against the spread it would have made over 34 seasons. Scores from previous weeks are used to estimate the point value of each team’s offense and defense. These values predict next week’s scores, and a bet is placed against the advertised spread. The sum of squares of offensive/defensive point values are constrained to be less than a regularization constant.

4 - An Optimal Pacing Strategy For Ultramarathons Kristopher Pruitt, Associate Professor, United States Air Force Academy, 2354 Fairchild Dr, Ste 6D222, USAFA, CO, 80840, United States, kristopher.pruitt@gmail.com, Justin Hill We present an optimization model designed to prescribe ideal pacing and nutrition strategies for athletes competing in ultramarathon races. The mixed- integer nonlinear program determines the level-of-effort and carbohydrate intake for the athlete during each kilometer in order to minimize the total completion time subject to the altitude, terrain, and distance of the race, as well as the fitness of the athlete. Our presentation includes modeling techniques required to linearize the problem and a numerical case study.

WE33 203B-MCC Procurement & Purchasing Management Contributed Session

Chair: Vandit Shah, California State University - Fullerton, Fullerton, CA, United States, vandit_2293@csu.fullerton.edu 1 - Geography Still Matters: Examine The Role Of Location In Online Markets For Foreign Branded Products Xia Zhao, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 479 Bryan Building, PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC, 27402, United States, x_zhao3@uncg.edu, Kexin Zhao, Jing Deng Internet technologies and e-commerce have significantly reduced communication costs and facilitated trade between distant parties. Conventional wisdom holds that the world becomes flat and geographic divisions are gradually irrelevant. This study investigates whether and how geographic location affects online sellers’ pricing strategies and sales for foreign branded products using a large data set collected from a brand owner’s website and an e-commerce retail platform. Our research provides empirical evidences that origin bias exists and geography still matters in the online platform. 2 - Value For Money Assessment Using Fuzzy Logic Deepak Kanhaiyalal Sharma, Assistant Professor, California State University - Fullerton, 800 N State College Blvd, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Eng., Fullerton, CA, 92831, United States, dsharma@fullerton.edu, Baig Jufain Mirza Value for Money (VfM) assessment is the gateway analysis for adopting the Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) for project delivery. Review shows that PPPs have evolved significantly but the VfM assessment has remained almost unchanged. Throughout the world, practitioners and researchers have voiced their concerns about the limitations of VfM assessment. Fuzzy Logic (FL) enables decision makers to assign degrees of truthfulness on the basis of “awareness” of the qualitative part of VfM and getting a single comprehensive VfM result. Using a case study this research also presents use of fuzzy decision analysis tools to supplement the existing VfM practice. 3 - Decision Science Tools For Value For Money (vfm) Analysis Deepak Kanhaiyalal Sharma, California State University - Fullerton, 800 N State College Blvd, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Eng., Fullerton, CA, 92831, United States, dsharma@fullerton.edu, Vandit Shah, Baig Mirza Value for Money (VfM) assessment is the gateway analysis that allows use of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) for project delivery. Review shows that PPPs have evolved significantly but the VfM assessment has remained almost unchanged, mandating enhancement of the process. This research presents application of Bayesian Networks (BN), Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to supplement the VfM by seamlessly integrating the qualitative and quantitative results of the assessment. A case study has been included to demonstrate the application of these methods along with advantages and disadvantages of each method. 4 - Contracting For Services In Multiple Industries: An Empirical Analysis Yuan Ye, PhD Candidate, University of Houston, 4800 Calhoun Rd, Houston, TX, 77004, United States, yye@bauer.uh.edu, David Xiaosong Peng Service contracting is a prevalent business practice to reduce costs, improve quality, access external knowledge and enhance innovation. Yet, many services are highly specialized or unique, making service contracting a challenge for both the buyer and the supplier. Based on the strategic sourcing processing, we develop an empirical study to investigate the practices in service contracting. We intend to benchmark the practices in different industries (e.g., healthcare, oil and gas, and manufacturing) and identify the best practices that drive success outcomes in service contracting.

494