Special Acknowledgement to the National Science Foundation (CMMI-0739996)
Inventory of Cash-Constrained Firms and the Option to Acquire Future Financing
Pierre-Yves Brunet
Industrial and Operations Engineering
University of Michigan
Trade credit financing allows cash-constrained firms to implement optimal operational decisions and to signal their credit quality to banks and other lenders. Using a stochastic, dynamic programming model we study joint procurement, inventory, and financing decisions of a firm and compute the signaling value of trade credit financing. In this paper, we highlight the effects of financing constraints on inventory decisions and the role of trade credit signaling. This is joint work with Volodymyr Babich.
Timing of Testing and Treatment of Hepatitis C
Daniel Mello Faissol
School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
We develop a Markov Decision Process (MDP) model for diseases where our goal is to determine the best timing for testing (and treatment) decisions when the presence of the disease is not known in advance. We focus on minimizing the cost from a societal perspective, and additionally produce an efficient frontier of timing decisions with respect to the cost per quality adjusted life year (QALY) measure. We apply the model to Hepatitis C, and we discuss the insights for healthcare practice.
Managing Patient Service in a Hospital Radiology Department
Eduardo Perez-Roman
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Texas A&M University
The objective of this project is to enhance patient service (including scheduling, safety, and flow) and resource productivity in hospitals' nuclear medicine departments. The complex nature of those types of departments leads to unique scheduling issues and the need to provide a high level of patient service. This project initiated a knowledge base to achieve the objective, including optimizing methods for scheduling and then rescheduling to deal with random disruptions, a simulation model that integrates with the scheduling methods to manage patient service levels, and computational evaluation to assist in evolving the methodologies and asses their validity and efficacy.
A Study of Collaboration and Competition among Humanitarian Relief Organizations
Clarence L. Wardell III
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Since the end of the Cold War, competition among humanitarian relief organizations has increased rapidly, often times leading to the degradation of primary relief objectives. We examine this notion of sub-optimality in relief work through simulation design and game theoretical analysis. We propose a signaling game as a model of donor and relief organization interaction, and explore mechanisms for inducing separating equilibria as it concerns selection of relief sites. The impetus behind organizational reluctance to collaborate is examined, along with the exploration of policies which may improve primary objective results.