THE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTS. By Oscar Kempthorne. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1952. 631 pp. $8.50. This book by a teacher of statistics (as well as a consultant for \"experimenters\") is a comprehensive study of the philosophical background for the statistical design of experiment. It is necessary to have some facility with algebraic notation and manipulation to be able to use the volume intelligently. The problems are presented from the theoretical point of view, without such practical examples as would be helpful for those not acquainted with mathematics. The mathematical justification for the techniques is given. As a somewhat advanced treatment of the design and analysis of experiments, this volume will be interesting and helpful for many who approach statistics theoretically as well as practically. With emphasis on the \"why,\" and with description given broadly, the author relates the subject matter to the general theory of statistics and to the general problem of experimental inference. MARGARET J. ROBERTSON

The Design and Analysis of Experiments

The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the supply chain coordination with contracts. Numerous supply chain models are discussed. In each model, the supply chain optimal actions are identified. The chapter extends the newsvendor model by allowing the retailer to choose the retail price in addition to the stocking quantity. Coordination is more complex in this setting because the incentives provided to align one action might cause distortions with the other action. The newsvendor model is also extended by allowing the retailer to exert costly effort to increase demand. Coordination is challenging because the retailer's effort is noncontractible—that is, the firms cannot write contracts based on the effort chosen. The chapter also discusses an infinite horizon stochastic demand model in which the retailer receives replenishments from a supplier after a constant lead time. Coordination requires that the retailer chooses a large basestock level.

Supply Chain Coordination with Contracts

Praise for the Third Edition: "This is one of the best books available. Its excellent organizational structure allows quick reference to specific models and its clear presentation . . . solidifies the understanding of the concepts being presented."IIE Transactions on Operations EngineeringThoroughly revised and expanded to reflect the latest developments in the field, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, Fourth Edition continues to present the basic statistical principles that are necessary to analyze the probabilistic nature of queues. Rather than presenting a narrow focus on the subject, this update illustrates the wide-reaching, fundamental concepts in queueing theory and its applications to diverse areas such as computer science, engineering, business, and operations research.This update takes a numerical approach to understanding and making probable estimations relating to queues, with a comprehensive outline of simple and more advanced queueing models. Newly featured topics of the Fourth Edition include:Retrial queuesApproximations for queueing networksNumerical inversion of transformsDetermining the appropriate number of servers to balance quality and cost of serviceEach chapter provides a self-contained presentation of key concepts and formulae, allowing readers to work with each section independently, while a summary table at the end of the book outlines the types of queues that have been discussed and their results. In addition, two new appendices have been added, discussing transforms and generating functions as well as the fundamentals of differential and difference equations. New examples are now included along with problems that incorporate QtsPlus software, which is freely available via the book's related Web site.With its accessible style and wealth of real-world examples, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, Fourth Edition is an ideal book for courses on queueing theory at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners who analyze congestion in the fields of telecommunications, transportation, aviation, and management science.

Fundamentals of Queueing Theory

Telephone call centers are an integral part of many businesses, and their economic role is significant and growing. They are also fascinating sociotechnical systems in which the behavior of customers and employees is closely intertwined with physical performance measures. In these environments traditional operational models are of great value--and at the same time fundamentally limited--in their ability to characterize system performance.We review the state of research on telephone call centers. We begin with a tutorial on how call centers function and proceed to survey academic research devoted to the management of their operations. We then outline important problems that have not been addressed and identify promising directions for future research.

/pdf/commissioned-paper-telephone-call-centers-tutorial-review-3kz951v5q4.pdf

Commissioned Paper: Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects

The Internet's computational power and flexibility have made auctions a widespread and integral part of both consumer and business markets. Though online auctions are a multi-billion dollar annual activity, with a growing variety of sophisticated trading mechanisms, scientific research on them is at an early stage. This paper analyzes the current state of management science research on online auctions. It develops a broad research agenda for issues such as the behavior of online auction participants, the optimal design of online auctions, the integration of auctions into the ongoing operation of firms, and the use of the data generated by online auctions to inform future trading mechanisms. These research areas will draw from applied and theoretical work spanning management science, economics, and information systems.

http://www.simon.rochester.edu/fac/pinker/Papers/ManagingOnlineAuctions.pdf

Managing Online Auctions: Current Business and Research Issues

Managing Online Auctions:Current Business and Research Issues.: Current Business and Research Issues.

Does cross-training workers allow a firm to achieve economies of scale when there is variability in the content of work, or does it create a workforce that performs many tasks with consistent mediocrity? To address this question we integrate a model of a stochastic service system with models for tenure- and experience-based service quality. When examined in isolation, the service system model confirms a well-known "rule of thumb" from the queueing literature: Flexible or cross-trained servers provide more throughput with fewer workers than specialized servers. However, in the integrated model these economies of scale are tempered by a loss in quality. Given multiple tasks, flexible workers may not gain sufficient experience to provide high-quality service to any one customer, and what is gained in efficiency is lost in quality.Through a series of numerical experiments we find that low utilization in an all-specialist system can also reduce quality, and therefore the optimal staff mix combines flexible and specialized workers. We also investigate when the performance of the system is sensitive to the staffing configuration choice. For small systems with high learning rates, the optimal staff mix provides significant benefits over either extreme case (a completely specialized or completely flexible workforce). If the system is small and the rate of learning is slow, flexible servers are preferred. For large systems with high learning rates, the model leans toward specialized servers. In a final set of experiments, the model analyzes the design options for an actual call center.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-764-the-theory-of-operations-management-spring-2004/lecture-notes/lec22_mccarthy.pdf

The Efficiency-Quality Trade-Off of Cross-Trained Workers

We examine services in which customers encounter a gatekeeper who makes an initial diagnosis of the customer's problem and then may refer the customer to a specialist. The gatekeeper may also attempt to solve the problem, but the probability of treatment success decreases as the problem's complexity increases. Given the costs of treatment by the gatekeeper and the specialist, we find the firm's optimal referral rate from a particular gatekeeper to the specialists. We then consider the principal-agent problem that arises when the gatekeeper, but not the firm, observes the gatekeeper's treatment ability as well as the complexity of each customer's problem. We examine the relative benefits of compensation systems designed to overcome the effects of this information asymmetry and show that bonuses based solely on referral rates do not always ensure first-best system performance and that an appropriate bonus based on customer volume may be necessary as well. We also consider the value of such output-based contracts when gatekeepers are heterogeneous in ability, so that two gatekeeper types face different probabilities of treatment success when given the same problem. We show that the firm may achieve first-best performance by either offering two contracts that separate the gatekeeper types or by offering a single contract that coordinates the treatment decisions of both gatekeepers.

Gatekeepers and Referrals in Services

This paper examines services in which customers encounter a gatekeeper who makes an initial diagnosis of the customer's problem and then may refer the customer to a specialist. The gatekeeper may also attempt to solve the problem, but the probability of treatment success decreases as the problem's complexity increases. Given the costs of treatment by the gatekeeper and the specialist, we find the firm's optimal referral rate from a particular gatekeeper to the specialists. We then consider the principal-agent problem that arises when the gatekeeper, but not the firm, observes the gatekeeper's treatment ability as well as the complexity of each customer's problem. We examine the relative benefits of compensation systems designed to overcome the effects of this information asymmetry and show that bonuses based solely on referral rates do not always ensure first-best system performance and that an appropriate bonus based on customer volume may be necessary as well. We also consider the value of such output-based contracts when gatekeepers are heterogeneous in ability, so that two gatekeeper types face different probabilities of treatment success when given the same problem. We show that the firm may achieve first-best performance by either offering two contracts that separate the gatekeeper types or by offering a single contract that coordinates the treatment decisions of both gatekeepers.

http://www.simon.rochester.edu/fac/pinker/Papers/GatekeepersMS2003.pdf

Edieal J. Pinker

Papers

Managing Online Auctions: Current Business and Research Issues

Managing Online Auctions:Current Business and Research Issues.: Current Business and Research Issues.

The Efficiency-Quality Trade-Off of Cross-Trained Workers

Gatekeepers and Referrals in Services

Gatekeepers and Referrals in Services