Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Mitigating Supply Chain Disruptions In Retail Discount Department Stores, Anthony T. Patton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Supply chain disruptions can have adverse effects on business outcomes. Retail industry supply chain leaders are concerned with supply chain disruptions because supply chain disruptions can lead to dissatisfied customers and loss of profits. Grounded in game theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies four retail industry supply chain leaders in Northern Illinois and Northwest Indiana implemented to mitigate the effects of supply chain disruptions. Data were collected using semistructured virtual interviews with four retail industry supply chain leaders and a review of company documents. Through thematic analysis, four themes emerged: (a) choosing appropriate inventory …

Analysis And Modeling Of Strategic Interactions In Health Systems To Improve Patient Care Access, Jorge A. Acuña Melo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Affordable health care access that provides well-coordinated and high-quality services on time is a goal that governments and health organizations strive for. Regrettably, most countries deal with access problems that affect the population's health, such as long waiting lists for specialized medical services, overcrowding of emergency departments, and high health prices. In the present doctoral dissertation, I model and analyze the strategic interactions that inhabit the health system machinery to uncover possible structural problems that led to the aforementioned issues. The study involves operation research, data science, and game theory techniques to address the health care access predicament.

Each research …

The Utilization Of Shared Energy Storage In Energy Systems: Design, Modeling And Optimization, Rui Dai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Energy storage (ES) plays a significant role in modern smart grids and energy systems. With the advances of ES technologies, efficiently applying ES to energy systems has become the bottleneck for achieving the benefits of ES. The traditional approach of utilizing ES is the so-called distributed framework in which there is a separate ES for each individual user. Due to the inherent limits in the distributed framework such as cost inefficiency and space limitations, many studies have promoted to utilize a shared ES in energy systems to further exploit the potentials of ES. However, current studies always focus on maximizing …

Two Complementary Methods For Studying Complex Social Systems: Simulation And Game Theory, Laobing Zhang, Qiming Ruan, Xiaogang Qiu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Alongside with scientific experiments and theoretic research, scientific computation is the third paradigm for studying our world. Modelling and simulation method is a main technique of scientific computation, focusing on resulting in a suitable model for the research subject. Game theory is a natural choice for modelling intelligent interactions among multiple decision makers, which can provide accurate interaction model for the simulation of complex systems. This paper investigates the application of game theory in military operation simulation and social system simulation. Bottlenecks of the use of game theory in these simulations are pointed out and some future research directions …

Equilibrium Modeling And Policy Analysis Of A Biofuel Supply Chain With A Hydroelectric Reservoir, Jinwoo Bae

Theses and Dissertations

This research proposesd a game theoretic model of a biofuel supply chain (BSC) where a utility company supplies reservoir water to two farmers, located in downstream and upstream of a hydropower dam. The decision-making process of the model is formulated as a three-stage Stackelberg game. We analyze the equilibrium of the decentralized systems and the effect of the government subsidy on energy crop (switchgrass) production for cellulosic biofuel industries, with two forms of subsidy: (1) discriminated subsidies and (2) equalized subsidies.

The results show that both forms of subsidy improve social welfare in the BSC unless the amount of subsidy …

Group Decision-Making, Edward Cook

Theses and Dissertations

The present work explores improvements in group decision-making. It begins with a practical example using state-of-the-art techniques for a complex, high-risk decision. We show how these techniques can reveal a better alternative. Although we created an improved decision process, decision-makers were apt to protect their own organizations instead of the project. This tendency was reduced over the course of the decision-making process but inspired the first conceptual component of this work.

The first concept describes the “Cost of Conflict” that can arise in a group decision, using game theory to represent the non-cooperative approach and comparing the outcome to the …

Development Of Post-Pareto Optimality Methods For Multiple Objective Optimization, Juan Valentin Fernandez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the past years, multiple objective optimization has been considered, as an important research area since in many real life problems there exists multiple criteria that need to be optimized simultaneously. The use of evolutionary algorithms or metaheuristic methods as solution methodologies lead to a large number of Pareto solutions rather than a single unique optimum. This Pareto-optimal set most of the time tends to be very large and the decision maker now faces the challenge of reducing its size to analyze a feasible number of solutions, thus deciding the best possible solution. In this work, two methods will be …

Collaborative Models For Supply Networks Coordination And Healthcare Consolidation, Shima Mohebbi

Doctoral Dissertations

This work discusses the collaboration framework among different members of two complex systems: supply networks and consolidated healthcare systems. Although existing literature advocates the notion of strategic partnership/cooperation in both supply networks and healthcare systems, there is a dearth of studies quantitatively analyzing the scope of cooperation among the members and its benefit on the global performance. Hence, the first part of this dissertation discusses about two-echelon supply networks and studies the coordination of buyers and suppliers for multi-period procurement process. Viewing the issue from the same angel, the second part studies the coordination framework of hospitals for consolidated healthcare …

Toward Large-Scale Agent Guidance In An Urban Taxi Service, Agussurja Lucas, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Empty taxi cruising represents a wastage of resources in the context of urban taxi services. In this work, we seek to minimize such wastage. An analysis of a large trace of taxi operations reveals that the services’ inefficiency is caused by drivers’ greedy cruising behavior. We model the existing system as a continuous time Markov chain. To address the problem, we propose that each taxi be equipped with an intelligent agent that will guide the driver when cruising for passengers. Then, drawing from AI literature on multiagent planning, we explore two possible ways to compute such guidance. The first formulation …

Colonel Blotto Games And Lancaster's Equations: A Novel Military Modeling Combination, Andrew Collins, Patrick T. Hester

VMASC Publications

Military strategists face a difficult task when engaged in a battle against an adversarial force. They have to predict both what tactics their opponent will employ and the outcomes of any resultant conflicts in order to make the best decision about their actions. Game theory has been the dominant technique used by analysts to investigate the possible actions that an enemy will employ. Traditional game theory can be augmented by use of Lanchester equations, a set of differential equations used to determine the outcome of a conflict. This paper demonstrates a novel combination of game theory and Lanchester equations using …

Cost Allocation For Transmission Investment Using Agent-Based Game Theory, Jakapun Mepokee, David Lee Enke, Badrul H. Chowdhury

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Due to electrical power restructuring, a dramatic change has been made to the generation and transmission sectors of the power industry. Rules and legislation are continuously changing. To promote more competition, transmission has to be expanded or upgraded to remove congestion and market power. The cost allocation of new investment in transmission has to be recalculated. The socialization methods of the past have been shown to be unfair to some market and network participants. The decentralization of cost allocation must be considered. The proposed paper provides a comparison between traditional cost allocation methods and a new cost allocation method based …