Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


case1147968123.pdf (930.41 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Three Essays in Operations

Tilson, Vera
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1147968123

Abstract Details

2006, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Operations Research.
This dissertation consists of three essays: two of them are studies in supply chain management, and one examines a problem in project management. The first essay, entitled, “Channel Strategies for Durable Goods”, examines the problem of a monopolist who concurrently sells and leases a finitely durable good to both individual and corporate consumers. A dynamic game model captures the interactions among the different marketing channels: (a) sale of new goods to individual consumers, (b) lease of new goods to both consumers and corporations, and (c) sale of off-lease goods to consumers. Managerial implications are drawn from the study of the monopoly's optimal pricing strategy for all channels. A project management problem of how to dynamically schedule tasks to maximize the expected present value is examined in the essay entitled “Scheduling Projects with Stochastic Activity Duration to Maximize EPV”. Project activity times are assumed to be exponentially distributed It is also assumed that the start of every activity requires an outlay of funds and that a single payment is received when the project is completed. The essay describes the algorithm for generating a Continuous-Time Markov Decision Process from a PERT network and the procedure for calculating an adaptive scheduling policy. Computational performance results demonstrate the feasibility of using the algorithm for real-life scheduling problems. We also discuss how the algorithm can be adapted to handle gamma distributed task durations as well as resource constraints. The third essay deals with the monotonicity properties of wholesale price contracts. We examine a two-echelon supply chain where the downstream retailer orders goods from an upstream supplier at a supplier-determined price. The essay provides a coherent integrated analysis of such contracts. Extensive operations and economics literature exists on wholesale price contracts, and while some of the results discussed here are well known, others have only been established in particular settings. The analysis presented does not require uniqueness and thus extends applicability. Qualitative sensitivity analysis is performed under very general assumptions about the retailer revenue function, and sufficient conditions are established that guarantee monotone changes in contract parameters (i.e. equilibrium wholesale price, quantity ordered, supplier profit) with changes in exogenous parameters such as retail price, demand elasticity and demand distribution. Many specific cases are encompassed by the assumptions including randomness in both yield and demand
Matthew Sobel (Advisor)
Economics, General
Stochastic Project Scheduling; Wholesale Price Contract; Monotonicity; Durable Goods

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Tilson, V. (2006). Three Essays in Operations [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1147968123

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Tilson, Vera. Three Essays in Operations. 2006. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1147968123.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Tilson, Vera. "Three Essays in Operations." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1147968123

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1147968123
1,004
© 2006, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.
Release 3.2.12