Operations and Supply Chain Management Commons^™

A Queueing Model For Customer Rescheduling And No-Shows In Service Systems, Yue Tang, Houyuan Jiang, Jingui Xie, Zhichao Zheng

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study an M/M/1/K queue where customers can reschedule their appointments. Rescheduled customers show up with higher probabilities, incurring lower no-show costs, but rescheduling also frees up slots that may not be filled later, leading to wasted service capacity and lower throughput. The system manager aims to minimize the long-run average cost by controlling rescheduling policies. We derive conditions under which rescheduling should be allowed for different scenarios depending on whether customers can reschedule only once or multiple times.

Dynamic Crop Allocation In The Presence Of Two-Season Crop Rotation Benefits, Onur Boyabatli, Javad Nasiry, Yangfang Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The objective of this chapter is twofold. First, to study how a farmer should dynamically allocate farmland between two crops when the crops have rotation benefits across growing seasons, i.e., when it is more profitable to grow a crop on rotated farmland (where the other crop was grown) than on non-rotated farmland (where the same crop was grown). Second, to develop a practically implementable heuristic allocation policy and examine its performance in comparison with other heuristic policies commonly suggested in the literature. While the chapter is based on our companion paper (Boyabatlı et al (Management Sci 65(5):2060–2076, 2019)), we characterize …

Resource Capacity Requirement For Multi-Terminal Cooperation In Container Ports, Byung Kwon Lee, Mei Wan Low

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capacity sharing among neighboring terminals offer a means to meet increasing or unexpected demand for cargo-handling without additional capital investment. This study proposes a model for capacity requirement planning of major resources, such as quay cranes (QCs), storage space, and gate, in multiterminal port operations where demand is time dependent. A resource profile simulation is run to generate random events across the terminals and estimate the capacity requirement in the form of workload distributions on port resources over time-shifts. The effects on workload requirement, arising from multiterminal cooperation, are subsequently evaluated in consideration of different container flows among terminals. Experimental …

Resource Capacity Requirement For Multi-Terminal Cooperation In Container Ports, Byung Kwon Lee, Mei Wan Low

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capacity sharing among neighboring terminals offer a means to meet increasing or unexpected demand for cargo-handling without additional capital investment. This study proposes a model for capacity requirement planning of major resources, such as quay cranes (QCs), storage space, and gate, in multiterminal port operations where demand is time dependent. A resource profile simulation is run to generate random events across the terminals and estimate the capacity requirement in the form of workload distributions on port resources over time-shifts. The effects on workload requirement, arising from multiterminal cooperation, are subsequently evaluated in consideration of different container flows among terminals. Experimental …

Resource Allocation With Sigmoidal Demands: Mobile Healthcare Units And Service Adoption, Andres Alban, Philippe Blaettchen, Harwin De Vries, Luk Van Wassenhove

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: Achieving broad access to health services (a target within the sustainable development goals) requires reaching rural populations. Mobile healthcare units (MHUs) visit remote sites to offer health services to these populations. However, limited exposure, health literacy, and trust can lead to sigmoidal (S-shaped) adoption dynamics, presenting a difficult obstacle in allocating limited MHU resources. It is tempting to allocate resources in line with current demand, as seen in practice. However, to maximize access in the long term, this may be far from optimal, and insights into allocation decisions are limited. Academic/practical relevance: We present a formal model of …

Greening E-Commerce In China, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Cainiao, Alibaba’s logistics arm, is leading the charge to address e-commerce’s waste and carbon footprint issue

Path To Global Inflence:Conditions For Chinese Film Industry To Succeed, Dong Yu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The world has undergone tectonic transformations since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Inevitably, the pandemic created the perfect conditions for the acceleration of digitization and new infrastructural technologies aimed to increase the speed and availability of content. In China, the pandemic forced
major releases to be streamed via online platforms and drastically altered consumer’s perception of the quality of digital content. Most importantly, digital streaming has shown huge capitalization potential, aided by the spread of 5G technologies, as those who embraced online platforms thrived in the midst
of the global pandemic. During the course of this dissertation, the Chinese …

Quantum Computing For Supply Chain Finance, Paul R. Griffin, Ritesh Sampat

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Applying quantum computing to real world applications to assess the potential efficacy is a daunting task for non-quantum specialists. This paper shows an implementation of two quantum optimization algorithms applied to portfolios of trade finance portfolios and compares the selections to those chosen by experienced underwriters and a classical optimizer. The method used is to map the financial risk and returns for a trade finance portfolio to an optimization function of a quantum algorithm developed in a Qiskit tutorial. The results show that whilst there is no advantage seen by using the quantum algorithms, the performance of the quantum algorithms …

Inventory Sharing And Demand-Side Underweighting, Hui Zhao, Liang Xu, Enno Siemsen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: Transshipment/inventory sharing has been used in practice because of its risk-pooling potential. However, human decision makers play a critical role in making inventory decisions in an inventory sharing system, which may affect its benefits. We investigate whether the opportunity to transship inventory influences decision makers' inventory decisions and whether, as a result, the intended risk-pooling benefits materialize. Academic/practical relevance: Previous research in transshipment, which is focused on finding optimal stocking and sharing decisions, assumes rational decision making without any systematic bias. As one of the first to study inventory sharing from a behavioral perspective, we demonstrate a persistent …

Turning The Tables In Research And Development Licensing Contracts, Niyazi Taneri, Pascale Crama

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research and development (R&D) collaborations between an innovator and her partner are often undertaken when neither party can bring the product to market individually, which precludes value creation without a joint effort. Yet, the uncertain nature of R&D complicates the monitoring of effort, and the resulting moral hazard reduces a collaboration’s value. Either party can avoid this outcome by acquiring the capability that is missing and then taking sole ownership of the project. That approach involves two types of risks: one related to whether the other party’s capability will be acquired and one related to how well it will be …

We Are On The Way: Analysis Of On-Demand Ride-Hailing Systems, Guiyun Feng, Guangwen Kong, Zizhuo Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: Recently, there has been a rapid rise of on-demand ride-hailing platforms, such as Uber and Didi, which allow passengers with smartphones to submit trip requests and match them to drivers based on their locations and drivers’ availability. This increased demand has raised questions about how such a new matching mechanism will affect the efficiency of the transportation system—in particular, whether it will help reduce passengers’ average waiting time compared with traditional street-hailing systems. Academic/practical relevance: The on-demand ride-hailing problem has gained much academic interest recently. The results we find in the ride-hailing system have a significant …

Building A Courier Service Company With It, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

XDel Singapore spent on sophisticated technology even while it was small. Its growth post-investment looks like money well-spent

The Role Of Law In Chinese Value Chains, Henry Gao, Gregory Shaffer

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Since starting its economic reform four decades ago, China has been highly successful in integrating its economy into regional and global value chains (GVCs). This started with simple assembly and processing, then expanded to low-end labor-intensive manufacturing, and gradually moved up to technology-intensive and capital-intensive industries. This article analyzes the development of Chinese law, legal institutions, and international and transnational legal initiatives to support the development of GVCs, which we divide into five phases. The article does not idealize law in terms of ‘commitment’ or ‘rule of law,’ but rather, in the legal realist tradition, views law as an important, …

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 …

How To Spot And Avoid Greenwashing In Supply Chains, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Research draws attention to practice of firms greenwashing their CSR by disclosing supply chain relationships with “green” but concealing “brown” suppliers

Essays On Predictive And Prescriptive Analytics For Risk Monitoring And Population Screening In Healthcare Management, Yan He

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Due to increased aging populations and changes in lifestyles, we have witnessed an increased prevalence of various chronic and acute diseases and a drastic rise in healthcare expenditures in recent years. It is of paramount importance for public health to promote regular screening and close monitoring to detect the early onset of diseases. On the other hand, the increasing availability of healthcare data and advancement in data analytics offer a huge potential to facilitate this goal. We can analyze the vast amount of data and recommend more personalized diagnostic tests after receiving results and signals from screening tests and monitoring …

Divide And Conquer: A Hygienic, Efficient, And Reliable Assembly-Line For Housekeeping, Xiao Alison Chen, Rowan Wang, Jianghua Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: This work focuses on the hotel housekeeping process. In a field study, a possible channel of disease transmission between consecutive guests in hotel rooms is revealed. In order to prevent the transmission, an innovative assembly-line housekeeping method is developed. Academic/practical relevance: The transmission of infectious diseases during hotel stays (e.g., by touching unclean towels or bed linens) has been reported globally. Under the current COVID-19 pandemic, having contact with saliva or mucus left by an infected person could cause infection. The standard housekeeping process used by the majority of hotels leaves a channel for new towels and bed …

Multi-Period Lot-Sizing With Supplier Selection: Structural Results, Complexity And Algorithms, Meichun Lin, Woonghee Tim Huh, Guohua Wan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider a multi-period lot-sizing problem with multiple products and multiple suppliers. Demand is deterministic and time-varying. The objective is to determine order quantities to minimize the total cost over a finite planning horizon. This problem is strongly NP-hard. For a special case, we extend the classical zero-inventory-ordering principle and solve it by dynamic programming. Based on this new extension, we also develop a heuristic algorithm for the general problem and computationally show that it works well.

Analytics For Hospital Resource Planning: Two Case Studies, Jingui Xie, Weifen Zhuang, Marcus Ang, Mabel C. Chou, Li Luo, David D. Yao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using real data and process flows from two large hospitals (in Singapore and in Chengdu, China) as cases, we illustrate how to apply certain modeling and optimization techniques, along with simulation as a validation tool, to hospital resource planning problems. We demonstrate how these simple analytical tools can help achieve significant improvements in both patient service and resource utilization, and without the need to increase the overall level of existing capacities. Two resource planning problems are studied in detail, one concerns the re-balancing of bed capacities among various wards, and the other addresses the allocation of medical diagnostic resource among …

Debiasing A Decision Maker Facing Supply Uncertainties In A Newsvendor Setting, Alan William Zeller

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Companies must be prepared to manage uncontrollable events that will disrupt their supply chain and add uncertainty to their inventory models.

This thesis first studies the effect of different types of supply disruption risks on the ordering performance of profit-maximizing decision makers in a newsvendor setting.

Then, this thesis aims at extending the literature on the newsvendor model in studying the effect of a Decision Support System and the effect of a Secondary Task on the ordering performance of profit-maximizing decision makers who face supply uncertainties in a newsvendor setting.

Finally, implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.

Flexible Resource Allocation For Service And Production Systems, Peng Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Resource flexibility hedges against uncertainty in service and production systems. However, flexibility also brings complexity and difficulty in allocating resources. The thesis mainly studies managing flexible resources in two scenarios. The first scenario is a type of coordination of workers in a production or assembly line – bucket brigade. Specifically, the study shows how to manage a stochastic bucket brigade with discrete work stations. The second scenario is a service system with flexible service resources. The study proposes a distributive decision rule for the allocation of resources under both supply and demand uncertainty.

Chapter 2 studies a J-station, I-worker bucket …

Essays On Management Of Scarce Resources, Qian Luo

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Efficient management of scarce resources is critical to the improvement of economic, social and/or environmental performances. In this dissertation, I focus on the management of two scarce resources: i) healthcare resources and ii) water, and investigate two important problems: i) the estimation of patients’ health transition to support healthcare resources control under the context of sequential medical treatments, and ii) the urban water system control with a specific focus on the wastewater recycling capacity investment in the presence of climate change and urban water scarcity. The first chapter studies how to estimate patients’ health transition considering the effects of treatment-effect-based …

Resilience As An Organisational Capability: A Study Of How Firms Survive And Outperform In Disruptive Times, Dietmar Kappel

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

An environment, in which volatility and deep uncertainty represent the leading paradigm, pressures firms to focus their attention on adapting to disruptive environmental conditions. Although scholarly attention in the firm-level resilience construct has increased over the years, a number of important issues remain underexplored. To advance progress in the field, research is needed on the dimensions of resilient response formulation and enactment, the dimensions of the disruptive environment and situational factors as well as resilience as a latent outcome variable. Based on an in-depth, systematic review of the received literature, this thesis aims to extend the firm-level resilience literature by …

Behavioural Incentivization In Healthcare Operations, Nicholas Teck Boon Yeo

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Common across current research in healthcare operations is the conclusion that there exist many inefficiencies in today’s healthcare systems. Governments and healthcare organisations have sought to address these inefficiencies through the introduction of new policies and operational procedures or by relying on incentives to encourage specific behaviour. However, despite these attempts to reduce inefficiencies in the healthcare systems, the problem persists and is further exacerbated by growing medical complexities coupled with a rapidly ageing population. Against this backdrop, this dissertation investigates two issues within healthcare operations: (i) colorectal cancer (CRC) screening adherence, and (ii) blood donor management. A distinguishing feature …

Examining The Real Costs Of Us Manufacturing Decoupling Strategies, Sze Chiang Jonathan Chee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Decoupling strategies have been the main focus of supply chain and resource management studies. Increasingly, due to the shift in geopolitical dynamics, the term ‘decoupling’ is now used in finance, accounting, political, and strategic management fields to describe the effect from the fallout of tense international relations. Existing research on this topic includes modeling strategic retaliation theories and evaluating firm effects from an accounting and finance perspective. Yet, there still is little research published on meso-level analysis of the relationship between macro and micro factors that affect organizational decoupling strategies. This study hopes to add to this new body of …

Decarbonising And Digitalising Shipping, Perlin Chan, Serene Johnson, Aladdy Choo, Lay Lin Tan, Annie Koh

Perspectives@SMU

Targeted regulation and a mindset shift are necessary to transform the maritime industry

Impact Of Penalty Cost On Customers' Booking Decisions, Jianghua Zhang, Daniel Zhuoyu Long, Rowan Wang, Chi Xie

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study a novel newsvendor-type problem where the information on demand quantity is not exogenously given. The customer needs to make the booking decision based on her estimation on demand, which is affected by the value of shortage penalty cost. The problem is motivated by low-cost airline service practices where passengers need to book baggage allowance for their travel. The baggage overweight price affects the accuracy of passengers’ baggage weight estimation and thus their booking quantities. Through stochastic decision models, we analytically characterize the impact of shortage penalty cost on passengers’ booking decisions as well as airline’s profit. We consider …

Urban Consolidation Center Or Peer-To-Peer Platform? The Solution To Urban Last-Mile Delivery, Qiyuan Deng, Xin Fang, Yun Fong Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The growing population in cities and booming e-commerce activities create huge demand for urban last-mile delivery, exerting intense pressure on the cities' well-being. To keep congestion and pollution under control, a consolidator can operate an urban consolidation center (UCC) to bundle shipments from multiple carriers before the last-mile delivery. Alternatively, the consolidator can operate a peer-to-peer platform for the carriers to share delivery capacity. We provide guidance for the consolidator to choose between these two business models by comparative analysis. We capture the interactions between the consolidator and carriers using a game-theoretical framework. Under each business model, the consolidator first …

Learning By Supplying And Competition Threat, Yi-Fan Chen, Alireza Naghavi, Shin-Kun Peng

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study proposes a model of learning by supplying in an international outsourcing framework, where the supplier of a relationship-specific input can reverse engineer and become a competitor to its partner in the final goods market. Transmitting knowledge to a more capable supplier therefore creates competitive threat despite the benefits it brings within an outsourcing relationship. In particular, in markets with less differentiated products and for standard inputs that require less knowledge to be shared, choosing an intermediate capability level supplier prompts a strategic expansion of output to deter supplier entry in the final goods market, resulting in higher profits …

Peer-To-Peer Trade And The Economy Of Distributed Pv In China, Peiyun Song, Yiou Zhou, Jiahai Yuan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the deepening of power market reform, distributed power generation is gaining momentum. This paper tests the distributed photovoltaic (DPV) economy under different business models by taking three provinces to stand for typical resource zones. The Internal return rate (IRR) is used to measure the economy, while the improved levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is used to model the generation cost. Three business modes, namely pure producer (all generation sold to the grid), prosumer (self-use and the rest sold to the grid), and peer-to-peer trade (P2P, all generation traded via the grid) are studied. Results show that peer-to-peer trade is …