Digital Commons Network^™

Examining Reported Versus Actual Attendance In College Basketball Non-Conference Games: Do Scheduling Elements Make A Difference?, Nels Popp, Stephen Shapiro, Jason Simmons, Ryan Dastrup

Journal of Applied Sport Management

This study examines factors impacting sport attendance at non-conference NCAA Division I men’s college basketball games. Non-conference college basketball games are relatively unique because athletic department personnel control many of the scheduling variables related to event popularity, including opponent, game day, and start time. As such, it is valuable for administrators to know which elements might maximize event revenue. The current study is also unique because it examines both reported attendance (tickets disseminated) and actual attendance (tickets scanned at the venue). A total of 48 schools provided ticket scan rate data for their non-conference home basketball games over three seasons …

Dynamic Scheduling With Uncertain Job Types, Zuo-Jun Max Shen, Jingui Xie, Zhichao Zheng, Han Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Uncertain job types can arise as a result of predictive or diagnostic inaccuracy in healthcare or repair service systems and unknown preferences in matching service systems. In this paper, we study systems with multiple types of jobs, in which type information is imperfect and will be updated dynamically. Each job has a prior probability of belonging to a certain type which may be predicted by data, models, or experts. A job can only be processed by the right machine, and a job assigned to the wrong machine must be rescheduled. More information is learned from the mismatch, and job type …

A Parameter Tuned Hybrid Algorithm For Solving Flow Shop Scheduling Problems With Parallel Assembly Stages, Mona Jabbari, Madjid Tavana, Parviz Fattahi, Fatemeh Daneshamooz

Business Systems and Analytics Faculty Work

In this paper, we study the scheduling problem for a customized production system consisting of a flow shop production line with a parallel assembly stage that produces various products in two stages. In the first stage of the production line, parts are produced using a flow shop production line, and in the second stage, products are assembled on one of the parallel assembly lines. The objective is to minimize the time required to complete all goods (makespan) using efficient scheduling. A mathematical model is developed; however, the model is NP-hard and cannot be solved in a reasonable amount of time. …

Limousine Service Management: Capacity Planning With Predictive Analytics And Optimization, Peng Liu, Ying Chen, Chung-Piaw Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The limousine service in luxury hotels is an integral component of the whole customer journey in the hospitality industry. One of the largest hotels in Singapore manages a fleet of both in-house and outsourced vehicles around the clock, serving 9,000 trips per month on average. The need for vehicles may scale up rapidly, especially during special events and festive periods in the country. The excess demand is met by having additional outsourced vehicles on standby, incurring millions of dollars of additional expenses per year for the hotel. Determining the required number of limousines by hour of the day is a …

Methods To Support The Project Selection Problem With Non-Linear Portfolio Objectives, Time Sensitive Objectives, Time Sensitive Resource Constraints, And Modeling Inadequacies, Neil C. Ranly

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force relies upon information production activities to gain insight regarding uncertainties affecting important system configuration and in-mission task execution decisions. Constrained resources that prevent the fulfillment of every information production request, multiple information requestors holding different temporal-sensitive objectives, non-constant marginal value preferences, and information-product aging factors that affect the value-of-information complicate the management of these activities. This dissertation reviews project selection research related to these issues and presents novel methods to address these complications. Quantitative experimentation results demonstrate these methods’ significance.

Labor Planning Outcomes: Systemic Management Models, Human Interactions, And Knowledge Sharing, Richard J. Tarpey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project takes a systemic approach to hospital labor planning and allocation rather than sub-optimizing the individual components of workload demand forecasting, scheduling, and staffing separately. The research considers all three components within their interdependent, dynamic, cyclical systemic nature to develop a better labor planning and allocation cycle (LPAC) management model across the various subsystems of the hospital. We used an Action Design Research (ADR) method to the guided emergence of innovative artifacts – Systemic LPAC Management Model and LPAC Performance Metrics – that we evaluate and improve through interventions in situ with practitioners. The Systemic LPAC Management Model leveraged …

Effects Of Incorporating Patient Acuity Into The Rn Assignment Process, Melissa L. Forton

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

As the largest sector of healthcare, nurses are the primary providers of patient care. By 2025, it is estimated that there will be a shortage of over 250,000 registered nurses (RNs) (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2011). Factors contributing to the nursing shortage include increased complexity of patients and decreased staffing that leads to decreased job satisfaction (Fox & Abrahamson, 2009). Over half of neonatal intensive care nurses reported missing at least one nursing task per shift when staffing was inadequate or patient acuity was high (TubbsCooley, Pickler, Younger, & Mark, 2015). The purpose of this evidence-based practice (EBP) …

A Multi-Method Scheduling Framework For Medical Staff, Wael Rashwan, John Fowler, Amr Arisha

Conference Papers

Hospital planning teams are always concerned with optimizing staffing and scheduling decisions in order to improve hospital performance, patient experience, and staff satisfaction. A multi-method approach including data analytics, modeling and simulation, machine learning, and optimization is proposed to provide a framework for smart and applicable solutions for staffing and shift scheduling. Factors regarding patients, staff, and hospitals are considered in the decision. This framework is piloted using the Emergency Department(ED) of a leading university hospital in Dublin. The optimized base staffing patterns and shift schedules actively contributed to solving ED overcrowding problem and reduced the average waiting time for …

Maximizing Operating Room Performance Using Portfolio Selection, Vivek Reddy Gunna, Amin Abedini, Wei Li

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The operating room (OR) is responsible for most hospital admissions and is one of the most cost and work intensive areas in the hospital. From recent trends, we observe an ironic parallel increase among expenditure and waiting time. Therefore, improving OR scheduling has become obligatory, particularly in terms of patient flow and benefit. Most of the hospitals rely on average patient arrivals and processing times in OR planning. But in practice, variations in arrivals and processing times causes high instability in OR performance. Our model of optimization provides OR schedules maximizing patient flow and benefit at a fixed level of …

An Optimization Model For Operating Room Scheduling To Reduce Blocking Across The Perioperative Process, Amin Abedini, Wei Li, Honghan Ye

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Operating room (OR) scheduling is important. Because of increasing demand for surgical services, hospitals must provide high quality care more efficiently with limited resources. When constructing the OR schedule, it is necessary to consider the availability of downstream resources, such as intensive care unit (ICU) and post anaesthesia care unit (PACU). The unavailability of downstream resources causes blockings between every two consecutive stages. In this paper we address the master surgical schedule (MSS) problem in order to minimize blockings between two consecutive stages. First, we present a blocking minimization (BM) model for the MSS by using integer programming, based on …

Nursing Assignments Based On Patient Acuity: The Road To Nursing Job Satisfaction, Kristina Tomic

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

Challenges in the healthcare industry, including nursing shortages and low nursing retention, have resulted in nurses’ job dissatisfaction. Improving work environment and workload can lead to improved and equitable nursing shift assignments, which may improve nursing job satisfaction. The purpose of this EBP project was to (a) implement a patient acuity tool in the hospital unit, (b) assess its effectiveness in appropriating nursing shift assignments, and (c) evaluate its effect on nursing job satisfaction. The Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) Model was used as a guide to facilitate the transition of the best evidence into practice. As suggested within the evidence, …

The Hidden Costs Of Scheduling: Temporal Structure Reduces Task Enjoyment And Contracts Time, Gabriela Nicole Tonietto

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Time is an important but limited resource, and consumers are constantly looking for ways to get more from their time. This has led to the popularity of scheduling as a strategy to help consumers manage and organize their time. Although scheduling is both highly recommended and widely adopted, surprisingly little is known about the psychological effects of scheduling. In this dissertation, I explore the potential effects of scheduling for task enjoyment, perceived time, and time consumption, finding that scheduling may have some important hidden costs. In the first chapter, I examine the effect of scheduling leisure activities. While prior research …

Comparing Critical Chain Project Managemenet With Critical Path Method: A Case Study, Behzad Montazeri

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Scheduling is a major task in project management. The current scheduling technique, Critical Path Method (CPM), has been widely applied for several decades, but a large number of projects fail to be completed on time and schedule delays occur in many projects. This raises question about the validity of the current project scheduling system. Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM), derived from Theory of Constraints, is a relatively new alternative approach toward scheduling projects. This study compared CCPM and CPM to determine which scheduling method delivers a shorter project duration and has a better usage of resources. A scheduling software called …

Scheduling Strategies For Construction Project Managers Toward On Time Delivery, Paul Shamp

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Construction management projects involve complex, dynamic environments resulting in uncertainty and risk, compounded by demanding time constraints. Research indicated project managers have struggled to identify best practices for scheduling construction projects via critical path methodologies while searching for tools to increase timely job completions and budget profits. The purpose of this single case study was to explore the strategies that construction project managers used to manage scheduled construction project delivery on time. The constructivist philosophical worldview was used as the framework for this study. Data were collected from semistructured interviews from 7 project managers from 5 different construction companies selected …

Ad Revenue Optimization In Live Broadcasting, Dana G. Popescu, Pascale Crama

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In live broadcasting, the break lengths available for commercials are not always fixed and known in advance (e.g., strategic and injury time-outs are of variable duration in live sports transmissions). Broadcasters actively manage their advertising revenue by jointly optimizing sales and scheduling policies. We characterize the optimal dynamic schedule in a simplified setting that incorporates stochastic break durations and advertisement lengths of 15 and 30 seconds. The optimal policy is a "greedy" look-ahead rule that accounts for the remaining number of breaks; in this setting, there is no value to perfect information at the scheduling stage, and hence knowing the …

Robust Distributed Scheduling Via Time Period Aggregation, Shih-Fen Cheng, John Tajan, Hoong Chuin Lau

Shih-Fen Cheng

In this paper, we evaluate whether the robustness of a market mechanism that allocates complementary resources could be improved through the aggregation of time periods in which resources are consumed. In particular, we study a multi-round combinatorial auction that is built on a general equilibrium framework. We adopt the general equilibrium framework and the particular combinatorial auction design from the literature, and we investigate the benefits and the limitation of time-period aggregation when demand-side uncertainties are introduced. By using simulation experiments on a real-life resource allocation problem from a container port, we show that, under stochastic conditions, the performance variation …

Robust Distributed Scheduling Via Time Period Aggregation, Shih-Fen Cheng, John Tajan, Hoong Chuin Lau

Shih-Fen Cheng

In this paper, we evaluate whether the robustness of a market mechanism that allocates complementary resources could be improved through the aggregation of time periods in which resources are consumed. In particular, we study a multi-round combinatorial auction that is built on a general equilibrium framework. We adopt the general equilibrium framework and the particular combinatorial auction design from the literature, and we investigate the benefits and the limitation of time-period aggregation when demand-side uncertainties are introduced. By using simulation experiments on a real-life resource allocation problem from a container port, we show that, under stochastic conditions, the performance variation …

Robust Distributed Scheduling Via Time Period Aggregation, Shih-Fen Cheng, John Tajan, Hoong Chuin Lau

Shih-Fen CHENG

In this paper, we evaluate whether the robustness of a market mechanism that allocates complementary resources could be improved through the aggregation of time periods in which resources are consumed. In particular, we study a multi-round combinatorial auction that is built on a general equilibrium framework. We adopt the general equilibrium framework and the particular combinatorial auction design from the literature, and we investigate the benefits and the limitation of time-period aggregation when demand-side uncertainties are introduced. By using simulation experiments on a real-life resource allocation problem from a container port, we show that, under stochastic conditions, the performance variation …

Joint Optimization Of Allocation And Release Policy Decisions For Surgical Block Time Under Uncertainty, Mina Loghavi

Doctoral Dissertations

The research presented in this dissertation contributes to the growing literature on applications of operations research methodology to healthcare problems through the development and analysis of mathematical models and simulation techniques to find practical solutions to fundamental problems facing nearly all hospitals.

In practice, surgical block schedule allocation is usually determined regardless of the stochastic nature of case demand and duration. Once allocated, associated block time release policies, if utilized, are often simple rules that may be far from optimal. Although previous research has examined these decisions individually, our model considers them jointly. A multi-objective model that characterizes financial, temporal, …

An Exact And Meta-Heuristic Approach For Two-Agent Single-Machine Scheduling Problem, Wen-Hung Wu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

In many real-life applications, it can be often found that multiple agents compete on the usage of a common processing resource in different application environments and different methodological fields, such as artificial intelligence, decision theory, operations research, etc. Moreover, scheduling with multiple agents is relatively unexplored. Based on this observation, this paper attempts to study a single-machine scheduling problem where the objective is to minimize the total tardiness of the first agent with the constraint that no tardy job is allowed for the second agent. In this study, we provide a branch-and-bound algorithm and a genetic algorithm for the optimal …

Vehicle Minimization For The Multimodal Pickup And Delivery Problem With Time Windows, Benjamin A . Clapp

Theses and Dissertations

The algorithm proposed here is used for heuristic solutions for the Multimodal Multiple Vehicle Routing Problem with Unloading Capacity, Pickup and Dropoff, and Time Windows, solved so as to minimize the number of vehicles used, subject to varying objective function values for each vehicle. The MVRP is simplified and split into a routing problem and a scheduling problem. The routing problem is addressed by Dijkstra's Algorithm. This generates a new network for the second stage of the algorithm. It is assumed that the shortest path is the correct path to use, and shipments each travel unimodally. The scheduling problem is …

Conditional Lot Splitting To Avoid Setups While Reducing Flow Time, Jacob V. Simons, Mark E. Kraus, Willis Mwangola, Gerard Burke

Department of Logistics & Supply Chain Management Faculty Publications

Previous research has clearly and consistently shown that flow time advantages accrue from splitting production lots into smaller transfer batches or sub-lots. Less extensively discussed, and certainly undesired, is the fact that lot splitting may dramatically increase the number of setups required, making it impractical in some settings. This paper describes and demonstrates a primary cause of these “extra” setups. It then proposes and evaluates decision rules which selectively invoke lot splitting in an attempt to avoid extra setups. For the closed job shop environment tested, our results indicate that conditional logic can achieve a substantial portion of lot splitting’s …

A Genetic Algorithm To Minimize The Total Tardiness For M-Machine Permutation Flowshop Problems, Chia-Shin Chung, James Flynn, Walter Rom, Piotr Staliński

Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation JEMI

The m-machine, n-job, permutation flowshop problem with the total tardiness objective is a common scheduling problem, known to be NP-hard. Branch and bound, the usual approach to finding an optimal solution, experiences difficulty when n exceeds 20. Here, we develop a genetic algorithm, GA, which can handle problems with larger n. We also undertake a numerical study comparing GA with an optimal branch and bound algorithm, and various heuristic algorithms including the well known NEH algorithm and a local search heuristic LH. Extensive computational experiments indicate that LH is an effective heuristic and GA can produce noticeable improvements over LH.

Robust Distributed Scheduling Via Time Period Aggregation, Shih-Fen Cheng, John Tajan, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we evaluate whether the robustness of a market mechanism that allocates complementary resources could be improved through the aggregation of time periods in which resources are consumed. In particular, we study a multi-round combinatorial auction that is built on a general equilibrium framework. We adopt the general equilibrium framework and the particular combinatorial auction design from the literature, and we investigate the benefits and the limitation of time-period aggregation when demand-side uncertainties are introduced. By using simulation experiments on a real-life resource allocation problem from a container port, we show that, under stochastic conditions, the performance variation …

Rationalising Public Service: Scheduling As A Tool Of Management In Rté Television, Ann-Marie Murray

Doctoral

Developments in the media industry, notably the increasing commercialisation of broadcasting and deregulation, have combined to create a television system that is now driven primarily by ratings. Public broadcast organisations must adopt novel strategies to survive and compete in this new environment, where they need to combine public service with popularity. In this context, scheduling has emerged as the central management tool, organising production and controlling budgets, and is now the driving force in television. Located within Weber’s theoretical framework of rationalisation, this study analyses the rise of scheduling as part of a wider organisational response to political and economic …

Optimal Advertisement Scheduling In Breaks Of Random Lengths, Ajay Srinivasan Aravamudhan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Broadcasters generate a large part of their revenue through advertising, especially in live sports. Scheduling advertisements can be challenging in live broadcasting, however, for sports such as Cricket that have breaks of random lengths and number during which the ads are shown. This uncertainty, coupled with the high price of spots for major competitions, means that improving ad scheduling can add significant value to the broadcaster. This problem shares similarities with the stochastic cutting stock problem and the dynamic stochastic knapsack problem, with applications in the wood, steel and paper industry and the transportation industry respectively.

This dissertation adds to …

Occupation And Industry Sex Segregation, Gender, And Workplace Support: The Use Of Flexible Scheduling Policies, K. L. Minnotte, Alison Cook, M. Minnotte

Alison Cook

This study examines how industry and occupation sex segregation are related to the utilization of flexible scheduling policies and perceptions of the career repercussions of using such policies. The analysis is performed on data from the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (N = 2810). Findings suggest that the percentage of women per industry and occupation increase the likelihood of using flexible scheduling, however, the effect is not cumulative. The results show that organization family support interacts with gender and the sex composition of the industry in predicting use of flexible scheduling. Further, the findings indicate that the relationship …

Summer Sessions Breakdown Of Course Dates And Time, Paul Savory

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

This report highlights an exhaustive analysis of the hundreds of Summer Session courses to develop an understanding of when they occur during the day and during which of the four academic terms. The analysis shows that the most popular time for scheduling courses is between 9:30 am and noon for each of the four summer session terms. Given the limited number of general purpose classrooms on campus, accommodating faculty preference for rooms, buildings, and computer equipment is sometimes not possible during the most in demand course times. The results also showcase the potential for having summer courses four-day per week …

Dynamic Allocation Of Airline Check-In Counters: A Queueing Optimisation Approach, Mahmut Parlar, Sharafali Moosa

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper was motivated by an observation in an international airport with regard to allocation of resources for check-in counters. In an exclusive check-in counter system, each flight has a dedicated number of counters that will be open until at least a half-hour before the scheduled departure of that flight. Currently, in many of the airports around the world, the decision to open or close check-in counters is done on an ad hoc basis by human schedulers. In doing so, the schedulers are almost always forced to perform a balancing act in meeting the quality of service stipulated by the …

R&D Project Scheduling When Activities May Fail, Bert De Reyck, Roel Leus

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

An R&D project typically consists of several stages. Due to technological risks, the project may have to be terminated before completion, each stage having a specific likelihood of success. In the project planning and scheduling literature, this technological uncertainty has typically been ignored and project plans are developed only for scenarios in which the project succeeds. In this paper we examine how to schedule projects in order to maximize their expected net present value when the project activities have a probability of failure and when an activity's failure leads to overall project termination. We formulate the problem, show that it …