Informs Annual Meeting 2017

MA15

INFORMS Houston – 2017

MA15

6 - Multi-objective Workload Balancing for Subjective Tasks Haoqiang Jiang, PhD Candidate, Florida International University, 11200 S.W. 8th Street, Miami, FL, 33193, United States, hjian006@fiu.edu, Debra VanderMeer Resource-task assignment is a critical problem in operations management. Many studies focus on workload balance across available working units using quantitative measures. However, familiarity with a work case can help individual to perform better in subjective tasks, which rely on personal judgement for unique task instances. We propose work assignment methods for subjective workloads that aim to simultaneously satisfy quantitative workload balance goals and maximize benefits of case familiarity. We study our methods in a simulated healthcare setting focused on nurse-patient assignment. 332D Empirical Healthcare and Service Operations Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Healthcare Operations Sponsored Session Chair: Diwas S KC, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, United States, diwas.kc@emory.edu 1 - Task Scheduling under Worker Discretion Maria Ibanez, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, United States, mibanez@hbs.edu, Michael Toffel Scheduling research investigates the optimal allocation of scarce resources (e.g., a worker) to tasks’ completion over time, typically overlooking the role of worker discretion. In practice, workers are often involved in these processes, influencing and being affected by job schedules. We examine how scheduling choices impact operational performance empirically using data from the field. 2 - The Impact of Buffer Location on Patient Satisfaction Dawson Kaaua, Wharton, 3730 Walnut Street, Suite 500, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States, kaaua@wharton.upenn.edu, Christian Terwiesch Service operations research has typically focused on a customer’s wait time without taking into account the fact that customers often wait in multiple locations before completing a service of interest. We examine how the location of waits can impact patient satisfaction in an ambulatory perioperative setting at a hospital. Specifically, we find that patients prefer to wait in the reception area versus the pre-operative area. Given this finding, we suggest that a CONWIP (pull) system could serve as a solution to managing the flow of patients. Finally, we uncover that the hospital is not using a pull system and could thus benefit from implementing one. 3 - Measuring Primary Care Performance using ED-Level Data Sandra Suelz, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, 50931, Netherlands, sulz@bmg.eur.nl, Nicos Savva Measuring access and clinical quality of GP care is difficult either due to data unavailability, low frequency of data collection, or inconsistent data collection across GPs. ED-level data, however, exists and is comparable across hospitals. We use UK-based data to analyze whether ED-level data can be used to assess GP performance thereby distinguishing between accessibility for acute conditions and Hailong Cui, University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business, Data Sciences and Operations, Los Angeles, CA, 90089- 0809, United States, Hailong.Cui.2019@marshall.usc.edu, Sampath Rajagopalan, Amy R.Ward Product returns are a major issue for many firms and especially for those making custom goods. We develop a model for predicting returns at a leading manufacturer of custom car accessories. The model takes into account product, retailer and production process characteristics. Several model specifications are explored and tested, including high dimension models. We identify the model specifications that do very well in out-of-sample prediction. Our analysis is useful to the firm in operational planning as well as in investigating products, retailers and other characteristics that tend to have high returns and return rates. MA14 management of long-term care conditions. 4 - Predicting Custom Product Returns

332E Interface of Finance Risk and Operations Management Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Supply Chain Sponsored Session Chair: William Schmidt, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14850, United States, wschmidt@cornell.edu 1 - Mitigating Disruption Risks in Delivery Supply Chains to Serve Contracted Customers Mert Hakan Hekimoglu, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Pittsburgh Building, Troy, NY, 12180, United States, hekimm@rpi.edu, John H.Park, Burak Kazaz Motivated by an implementation in a Fortune 150 company, we examine the role of risk aversion on capacity decisions in a delivery supply chain in the presence of supply disruptions. The delivery supply chain involves fulfillment centers that are responsible for delivering orders within the next day. The proactive capacity decisions are coupled with reactive contingency routing decisions to mitigate the effects of disruptions. 2 - Suppliers as Liquidity Insurers Panos Markou, Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge, United Kingdom, p.markou@jbs.cam.ac.uk, Daniel S. Corsten, Reint Gropp We examine how financial constraints in portfolios of suppliers affect customer cash holdings. Using a data set of private and public firms and their suppliers, we show that customers rely on unconstrained suppliers to provide them with backup liquidity and stockpile around 10% less cash than customers with constrained suppliers. We further show that customers with unconstrained suppliers simultaneously receive more trade credit; that the reduction in cash holdings is greater for firms with stronger ties to their unconstrained suppliers; and that customers reduce cash holdings following a significant relaxation in their suppliers’ financial constraints through an IPO. 3 - Inaccurate Durations and Supply Chain Disruptions William Schmidt, Cornell University, 314 Sage Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14850, United States, wschmidt@cornell.edu, Mili Mehrotra We quantify the performance impact of inaccurate disruption duration estimates using the supply chain data from a multinational division of a Fortune 100 manufacturing firm. We find that inaccurate information on the duration of a disruption can significantly increase the cost of the disruption. In many of those cases we find that a disruption will only be materially costly to the firm if the disruption duration is misestimated. These costs are (1) incremental to the cost of a disruption whose duration is accurately estimated, (2) are incurred regardless of whether the disruption duration is initially over-estimated or under-estimated, and (3) can be large even for small estimation errors. 4 - Worker Poaching in a Supply Chain: Enemy from with in? Evan Barlow, Weber State University, Goddard School of Business & Economics, 1337 Edvalson St, Ogden, UT, 84408, United States, evanbarlow@weber.edu, Gad Allon, Achal Bassamboo Poaching workers has become a universal practice. We explore worker poaching between firms linked in a supply chain. We show that the classical intuition from labor economics is insufficient in explaining poaching between supply chain partners. We also show how and under what conditions worker poaching can actually improve supply chain performance. Finally, we show how the equilibrium identity of the supply chain bottleneck depends on the interaction between hiring, poaching, and productivity.

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