SCM-MS Announcements updated at 14:19 Aug 31.

- Casey Chung from Blockbuster will talk about Blockbuster's supply chain 6-7pm on Sep 2 at SOM 1.517.

- Transporattion Panel at Auditorium 1.118, School of Management, UT Dallas on Thursday, September 10 from 7 pm until 9 pm.
Transportation Panel organized by Dr. Ronald Chu from American Airlines (AA). Experienced participants from Industry and Academia (AA, BNSF, Sabre, SMU, SWA, UTA, and UTD) will discuss their perspective on the challenges facing Operations Research (OR) professionals in the Transportation sectors, possible areas of collaboration between Academia and Industry, and on the future of the OR/MS discipline.

- New course announcement: OPRE 6377 Demand and Revenue Management by Metin Cakanyildirim in Fall 2009. More information is here.

- UTD SCM community and friends now come together in Facebook. Join us by becoming a friend of Utd Scm.

- Urgent: Lucretia (lensm@utdallas.edu) from career center is compiling the resumes of OPRE 6366 students. Some DFW companies made a special request to see the resumes without posting positions. Please email your resume in Microsoft Word format to her.

Past Events

- Presentation on Thursday, May 14th at 7pm on "Applying OR in Brazil to solve real world challenges with OPTMODEL from SAS" by Mary Grace Crissey, Analytics Marketing Manager at SAS. This is Informs-DFW event, see the link on the left hand panel for more information. The event is open to public.

- Ericsson has two Spring/Summer Supply Chain-Logistics internships available for Supply Chain/Operations Jrs/Srs/Masters who are US Citizens or Permanent Residents. The start date is January and the internship will continue through August. Please submit your resume to Lucretia Ensminger at lensm@utdallas.edu who will forward it for consideration.

- Information Session for Undergraduate Students on Operations Management (OM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) offerings at UT-Dallas: Fast-track SCM-MS degree for undergraduate students; OM Concentration for undergraduate students. Also OM and SCM Job opportunities will be discussed. Time and Place: 16:30-17:30 on Wednesday November 19 at SOM 1.517. Please contact Dr. Avanti Sethi at avanti.sethi@utdallas.edu SOM3.212 if you have questions.

- CSCMP is having a dinner meeting and a presentation on Nov 13. Greg Chalkley, Director, Global Trade Complaince, Texas Instruments Incorporated will talk on "Doing Business In China". Where: Omni Dallas Hotel - Park West, 1590 LBJ Freeway Dallas, TX 75234. When: Thursday, November 13th, 2008. 5:30 Registration & Networking. 6:30 Dinner & Presentation. 8:30 Adjourn. Two UTD students can attend for free if they help with the registration. This is a good opportunity to network with the practitioners. If interested, let me know immediately. More info on the event is at CSCMP-DFW web site on the left.

- Presentation on October 31: "Dynamic Scheduling of Outpatient Appointments under Patient No-shows and Cancellations" by Nan Liu from University of North Carolina at UT-Dallas SOM 1.110 at 13:30.

Abstract: In this talk we develop a framework and propose heuristic dynamic policies for scheduling outpatient appointments taking into account the fact that patients may cancel or not show up for their appointments. The heuristic is obtained by applying a single step of the policy-improvement algorithm on a "good" initial policy. In a simulation study that considers a "model clinic," which is created using data obtained from the University of North Carolina Department of Family Medicine, we find that the heuristics proposed outperform all the other benchmark policies, particularly when the patient load is high compared with the regular capacity. We find that the Open Access policy, a popular scheduling paradigm proposed recently which calls for "meeting today's demand today," can be a reasonable choice when the patient load is relatively low, supporting earlier findings in the literature.

- Field trip October 29: ISM-UTD student chapter is organizing a field trip to a Distribution Center (DC) managed by APL Logistics (a.k.a. Kellog's DC) from 3pm to 5pm. Address: 2722 S. Jupiter Road, Garland TX 75041. Please contact Millie Chang (mchmont@gmail.com) or see the flyer for more info.

- Presentation on September 26: "Modeling Buzz" by Thomas I. Seidman from University of Maryland at UT-Dallas SOM 1.110 at 14:00.

Abstract: We view `buzz' as a characteristic aspect of communication/interaction having particular significance for marketing. While buzz has always been present, there has been little effort to modeling its dynamics; in any case, these have been profoundly changed in recent years by the advent of modern telecommunications. In this talk we make some attempt at developing a model for the spread/diffusion of buzz as it may relate to a particular topic. This remains work-in-progress and we comment on what must still be done for this analysis to provide useful control-theoretic support for marketing.

- Presentation on September 26: "Sleeping with the Frenemy: Trade-offs in Spatial Location Choice" by Sumon Datta from Yale University at UT-Dallas SOM 1.502 at 10:30.

Abstract: A central tradeoff in location choice is the balance between agglomeration and differentiation. Should a firm co-locate (sleep) close to a competitor to increase volume (competitor is a “friend” who can draw more customers to the location with agglomeration) or locate far away from a competitor in order to reduce competition and increase margin (competitor is an “enemy” from who one should spatially differentiate)? Extant structural models ignore the agglomeration benefit, but given the high levels of co-location, this is a serious gap in the literature. Since observed co-location may be consistent with pure differentiation rationales such as (a) high demand at the location; (b) low cost at the location and (c) restrictive zoning regulations which allow entry in only small areas, it is challenging to disentangle the agglomeration-differentiation tradeoff from firm location choices. The paper develops a comprehensive structural model of entry and location choice that helps disentangle the agglomeration-differentiation tradeoff. The paper has three key innovations: First, to separate the agglomeration-differentiation effect, we decompose profits into revenue and cost and then further show how to decompose the revenue into its components of consumer choice based volume and competition based price. Second, to separate demand and cost explanations, and to non-parametrically identify price competition, we augment entry and location data with revenue data for all stores and price data for one store chain in our dataset. Finally, to capture zoning effects, we introduce a new approach to obtain zoning data, an approach that should be of general interest for a large stream of spatial location applications. Our estimates and counterfactual analysis show that the agglomeration effect is strong and explains a significant fraction of observed co-location. Surprisingly, zoning has little direct effect on co-location. But tighter zoning restrictions interact with the agglomeration effect to explain a surprisingly large fraction of observed co-location. We find that a small change in zoning causes a discontinuous impact on the observed location pattern. This highlights the value of a structural model in understanding how a small perturbation of market characteristics can cause strategic firms to respond in complex and nonlinear ways.

- Conference on 24-26 September: ISM Southwest Conference in Dallas Marriott, Frisco, TX, 24-26 September, 2008; see the conference brochure. Student registration rate is $200.

- SCIP Fall meeting on September 24 : The Society for Competitive Intelligence (SCIP) is holding the fall meeting in the SOM at 16:00. SCIP is providing 100 UT-Dallas students with free tickets to the event (normally $20 each). The speakers for the event have the following titles: 1) CEO for Med-Synergies (medical service company for physicians). 2) Senior Director of Industrial Relations and Technical Strategy for TI (and author of “Bowling with a Crystal Ball). 3) Senior VP of Marketing and Competitive Insights with Radio Shack. All three of the speakers have been asked to have their HR people on sight to talk to students about internships and job opportunities.

- UTDallas Career Expo on September 18: 11:00 - 15:00 at UTD Activity Center. Open to all UTD Students and Alumni. Business Attire Required. Cisco, Ericsson, Frito Lay, Fujitsu, Nokia, Nortel, Southwest Airlines and others will be there and they want supply chain graduates.

- Presentation on September 17: "Procurement: Trends and Best Practices" by Patrick Woods, founder of Supply Chain education, UT-Dallas SOM 1.517 at 18:00. Free food and drinks will also be available.

- Sponsorship for CSCMP dinner meetings: CSCMP can sponsor 1-2 UT-Dallas students for the CSCMP-DFW Dinner meeting at Omni Dallas Hotel - Park West happening about once a month. The interested students should check with me (metin@utdallas.edu) and show up at 17:30 on the day of meeting and help with hosting the event. More information can be found by following CSCMP-DFW link on the left-hand side.

- Presentation on September 11: "Beyond Lean: Evolving into a Super Talent Factory" by Yong Yin at UT-Dallas SOM 2.102 at 19:00.

Abstract: We introduce a new manufacturing organization - seru. Seru has earned reputation as the "next generation of lean" or "beyond lean" in Japan for several years, but it is still largely unknown outside Japan. Seru is an inheritance and evolution of Toyota's lean philosophy and Sony's one-man production organization, but it is more efficient and flexible than lean when applying it in industries such as electronics and auto components. Huge benefits have obtained by applying seru system. By using historic cases of many global leading companies (Ford, GM, Toyota, Sony, Canon, NEC and others), we firstly give a detailed picture of the evolutionary process of manufacturing organizations in the history. Then, we explain what is the seru system, how to create and apply it. Finally, we predict the expected important impacts of seru for industries.

- Ph.D. defense presentation on September 8: "Risk Management in Supply Chains" by Sanjay Kumar at UT-Dallas SOM 1.508 at 15:00.

- Presentation on September 8: "Optimal Contracting with a Fair-Minded Retailer" by Elena Katok, from Penn State University at SOM 1.801 at UT-Dallas starting at 13:00.
Abstract: Operations management literature proposes many different contracts to coordinate a simple supplier-retailer channel. Generally, when these contracts are tested in a laboratory setting they do not work as the standard theory predicts: the supplier, even when endowed with all the bargaining power, is able neither to fully coordinate the channel nor to extract all of the channel profit. This is consistent with the existing data on the Ultimatum Game experiments, which are similar to contracting games studied in the supply chain literature. We extend the existing body of research in supply chain coordination by providing a model that incorporates the desire for fairness into the supply chain contracting setting, and characterize the supplier's optimal profit-maximizing contract when faced with a retailer who demands her fair share. We test the model using a laboratory experiment and find that it explains and predicts contracting outcomes significantly better than the standard theory.

- Free Breakfast Seminar on September 4: C4ISN hosts "Procurement for the 21st Century" at SOM 1.508, UT-Dallas at 7:30 to 12:00 on September 4, 2008; more information.

- Welcome Back to School Event for the School of Management on Tuesday, September 2nd; in the SOM Courtyard/Hallway. From 5:00 – 7:00 PM, with Free Hot Dogs, Roasted Vegetables & Cheese and all the trimmings, Dessert and Drinks. SOM Student Organizations will be on hand for questions, Music provided by UTD Radio DJ.

- Presentation: "Operational Variable Job Scheduling with Eligibility Constraints" by E. Cicek and A. G. Korkmaz at SOM 1.110, UT-Dallas at 14:00 on Aug 22.
Abstract: In this study, we consider the problem of Operational Variable Job Scheduling, also referred to as parallel machine scheduling with time windows. The problem is a more general version of the Fixed Job Scheduling problem, involving a time window for each job larger than its processing time. The operational problem tries to find the optimal subset of the jobs that can be processed. An interesting application area lies in Optimal Berth Allocation, which involves the assignment of vessels arriving at the port to appropriate berths within their time windows, while maximizing the total profit from the served vessels. Eligibility constraints are also taken into consideration. We develop an integer programming model for the problem. We show that the problem is NP-hard, and develop a constraint-graph-based construction algorithm for generating near-optimal solutions. We use genetic algorithm and other improvement algorithms to enhance the solution. Computational experimentation reveals that our algorithm generates very high quality solutions in very small computation times.

- Presentation: Negotiation lecture on Aug 26 by Ambassador Dennis Ross is cancelled.
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