Speaker:Qi Xiangtong, Associate Professor of Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Topic:Production Scheduling and Price Quotation with Uncertain Order Inquiries

Time:June 7, 2013, 10:00-11:30am

Location:B247, EMS

Abstract:We study the coordination between pricing and production scheduling decisions of a manufacturer who quotes prices for a set of order inquiries. Each inquiry is either canceled or confirmed by its owner following a certain probability distribution that depends on the quoted price. The manufacturer then incurs a production scheduling cost for processing each firm order. Two types of price quotation schemes, simultaneous and sequential quotations, are investigated. A simultaneous quotation quotes all order inquiries simultaneously. We formulate the problem with a special form of price function as a quadratic program that can be solved efficiently. Properties of optimal quotations are provided. A sequential quotation quotes order inquiries one at a time. For the problem, we develop optimal algorithms using implicit enumeration, and design efficient heuristics. Through computational studies, we compare simultaneous and sequential quotations and provide several managerial insights. We also recognize conditions under which simultaneous quotation performs close to sequential quotation, and conditions under which heuristic sequential quotation performs near optimal.

About the Speaker:

Xiangtong Qi is an associate professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He got his Ph.D. degree in August 2003 from the Department of Management Science and Information Systems, Red McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin. Before that, he was studying in the Department of Computer and System Sciences, Nankai University, and got his Ph.D. degree in 1998, Master degree in 1995, and Bachelor degree in 1992.

Xiangtong’s main research interests include production scheduling, inventory control, logistics and supply chain management. He has published more than 40 papers in major academic journals, such as Operations Research, Naval Research Logistics, IIE Transactions, Journal of Scheduling, European Journal of Operational Research, Annals of Operations Research, Omega, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, etc. He is the coauthor of the book Disruption Management: Framework, Models and Applications. He serves as Associate Editor for the journals of IIE Transactions, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and Asia-Pacific Journal of Operations Research.