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On The Design Of Sparse But Efficient Structures In Operations, Zhenzhen Yan, Sarah Yini Gao, Chung Piaw Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

It is widely believed that a little flexibility added at the right place can reap significant benefits for operations. Unfortunately, despite the extensive literature on this topic, we are not aware of any general methodology that can be used to guide managers in designing sparse (i.e., slightly flexible) and yet efficient operations. We address this issue using a distributionally robust approach to model the performance of a stochastic system under different process structures. We use the dual prices obtained from a related conic program to guide managers in the design process. This leads to a general solution methodology for the …