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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Dual-Channel Warehouse And Inventory Management With Stochastic Demand, Fawzat Alawneh, Guoqing Zhang Feb 2018

Dual-Channel Warehouse And Inventory Management With Stochastic Demand, Fawzat Alawneh, Guoqing Zhang

Mechanical, Automotive & Materials Engineering Publications

This study examines the inventory policy for the emerging dual-channel warehouse, which has a unique structure where the warehouse is divided into two areas: one for fulfilling online orders and the other for storing products and fulfilling offline orders. A multi-item inventory model was developed considering the warehouse capacity constraint, demand, and lead time uncertainty. Solution methods are provided for both uniform and normal distributions. Adopting the proposed inventory policy for a dual warehouse is cost effective and adds flexibility to the warehouse and supply chain. The study also offers managerial insights on some critical issues faced by companies operating …


Risk Management In A Vuca Environment: Some Key Considerations, Foo S.L., Nam Sang Cheng, Nam Sang Cheng Apr 2016

Risk Management In A Vuca Environment: Some Key Considerations, Foo S.L., Nam Sang Cheng, Nam Sang Cheng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Whatis VUCA? Why is it relevant to accountants, the C-suites and Board ofDirectors? Companies are in the business of taking risks for rewards. Situatedbetween the companies are in the business of taking risks for rewards. Situatedbetween the companies and the rewards are risks. Critical concepts in thisprocess are volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), a trendymanagerial acronym that conflates the reality of the business environment and the challenges ofrisk management.


A Three-Stage Model For Closed-Loop Supply Chain Configuration Under Uncertainty, Saman Hassanzadeh Amin, Guoqing Zhang Jan 2013

A Three-Stage Model For Closed-Loop Supply Chain Configuration Under Uncertainty, Saman Hassanzadeh Amin, Guoqing Zhang

Mechanical, Automotive & Materials Engineering Publications

In this paper, a general closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network is configured which consists of multiple customers, parts, products, suppliers, remanufacturing subcontractors, and refurbishing sites. We propose a three-stage model including evaluation, network configuration, and selection and order allocation. In the first stage, suppliers, remanufacturing subcontractors, and refurbishing sites are evaluated based on a new quality function deployment (QFD) model. The proposed QFD model determines the relationship between customer requirements, part requirements, and process requirements. In addition, the fuzzy sets theory is utilised to overcome the uncertainty in the decision-making process. In the second stage, the closed-loop supply chain network …


Prioritized Shaping Of Models For Solving Dec-Pomdps, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, William Yeoh, Prasanna Velagapudi, Paul Scerri Jun 2012

Prioritized Shaping Of Models For Solving Dec-Pomdps, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, William Yeoh, Prasanna Velagapudi, Paul Scerri

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An interesting class of multi-agent POMDP planning problems can be solved by having agents iteratively solve individual POMDPs, find interactions with other individual plans, shape their transition and reward functions to encourage good interactions and discourage bad ones and then recompute a new plan. D-TREMOR showed that this approach can allow distributed planning for hundreds of agents. However, the quality and speed of the planning process depends on the prioritization scheme used. Lower priority agents shape their models with respect to the models of higher priority agents. In this paper, we introduce a new prioritization scheme that is guaranteed to …


Robust Distributed Scheduling Via Time Period Aggregation, Shih-Fen Cheng, John Tajan, Hoong Chuin Lau Jan 2012

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 …


System Of Systems Perspective On Risk: Towards A Unified Concept, C. Ariel Pinto, Michael K. Mcshane, Ipek Bozkurt Jan 2012

System Of Systems Perspective On Risk: Towards A Unified Concept, C. Ariel Pinto, Michael K. Mcshane, Ipek Bozkurt

Finance Faculty Publications

Many systems and projects that concern systems engineers, engineering managers, and business managers today can be defined as system of systems (SoS), which are described as ambiguous, uncertain and dynamic, among others. In addition to the traditional view on risk identification, analysis and management, the concept of risk should be considered with respect to these systems of systems. The purpose of this paper is to analyse both fundamental concepts and recent publications in system of systems, business and engineering management, as well as risk analysis, modelling, and management for the purpose of better describing the concept of risk with respect …


Decentralized Decision Support For An Agent Population In Dynamic And Uncertain Domains, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Shih-Fen Cheng, Thi Duong Nguyen May 2011

Decentralized Decision Support For An Agent Population In Dynamic And Uncertain Domains, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Shih-Fen Cheng, Thi Duong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research is motivated by problems in urban transportation and labor mobility, where the agent flow is dynamic, non-deterministic and on a large scale. In such domains, even though the individual agents do not have an identity of their own and do not explicitly impact other agents, they have implicit interactions with other agents. While there has been much research in handling such implicit effects, it has primarily assumed controlled movements of agents in static environments. We address the issue of decision support for individual agents having involuntary movements in dynamic environments . For instance, in a taxi fleet serving …


The Shifting Terrain Of Risk And Uncertainty On The Liability Insurance Field, Tom Baker Feb 2011

The Shifting Terrain Of Risk And Uncertainty On The Liability Insurance Field, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent sociological and historical work suggests that insurance risks often are not reliably calculable, except in hindsight. Insurance is “an uncertain business,” characterized by competition for premiums that pushes insurers into the unknown. This essay takes some preliminary steps that extend this insight into the liability insurance field. The essay first provides a simple quantitative comparison of U.S. property and liability insurance premiums over the last sixty years, setting the stage to make three points: (1) liability insurance premiums have grown at a similar rate as property insurance premiums and GDP over this period, providing yet another piece of evidence …


An Overview Of The Low-Cost Carrier Model In The Russian Market, Tamilla Curtis, Dawna L. Rhoades Jan 2011

An Overview Of The Low-Cost Carrier Model In The Russian Market, Tamilla Curtis, Dawna L. Rhoades

Publications

This study provides an overview of the low-cost carrier (LCC) model in the Russian market. The LCC model seeks to achieve a competitive advantage through the reduction of operating costs, below the traditional airline model. Since Russia is an emerging and developing economy, airlines face a high level of uncertainty. Despite the fact that the Russian aviation market is dominated by a few large carriers, Russian lowcost airlines such as SkyExpress and Avianova have been growing rapidly since starting their operations. While Russian LCCs follow the traditional LCC model, some differences are apparent as a result of the specifics of …


Risk And System-Of-Systems: Toward A Unified Concept, C. Ariel Pinto, Michael K. Mcshane, Rani Kady Jan 2010

Risk And System-Of-Systems: Toward A Unified Concept, C. Ariel Pinto, Michael K. Mcshane, Rani Kady

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The scope of this paper is the survey of both fundamental and most recent publications in system-of-systems, business and insurance, as well as risk analysis, modeling, and management for the purpose of better describing the concept of risk in recognition of emergence and complexity which characterizes many systems within the concern of engineering and business managers. The ultimate goal is to provide engineering and business managers the necessary perspective on the concept of risk and in its management for the next generation of sustainable systems - including various descriptions of risk and discussion of the relevance of properties of system-of-systems …


Font Size: Make Font Size Smaller Make Font Size Default Make Font Size Larger Exploiting Coordination Locales In Distributed Pomdps Via Social Model Shaping, Pradeep Varakantham, Jun Young Kwak, Matthew Taylor, Janusz Marecki, Paul Scerri, Milind Tambe Sep 2009

Font Size: Make Font Size Smaller Make Font Size Default Make Font Size Larger Exploiting Coordination Locales In Distributed Pomdps Via Social Model Shaping, Pradeep Varakantham, Jun Young Kwak, Matthew Taylor, Janusz Marecki, Paul Scerri, Milind Tambe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Distributed POMDPs provide an expressive framework for modeling multiagent collaboration problems, but NEXPComplete complexity hinders their scalability and application in real-world domains. This paper introduces a subclass of distributed POMDPs, and TREMOR, an algorithm to solve such distributed POMDPs. The primary novelty of TREMOR is that agents plan individually with a single agent POMDP solver and use social model shaping to implicitly coordinate with other agents. Experiments demonstrate that TREMOR can provide solutions orders of magnitude faster than existing algorithms while achieving comparable, or even superior, solution quality.