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Sameer Hasija

Bio: Sameer Hasija is an academic researcher from INSEAD. The author has contributed to research in topics: Outsourcing & Vendor. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 46 publications receiving 888 citations. Previous affiliations of Sameer Hasija include Binghamton University & University of Rochester.

Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper examines contracts to coordinate the capacity decision of a vendor who has been hired by a client to provide call center support and considers how profits are allocated between the client and the vendor.
Abstract: In this paper, we examine contracts to coordinate the capacity decision of a vendor who has been hired by a client to provide call center support. We consider a variety of contracts, all based on our observations of contracts used by one large vendor. We examine the role of different contract features such as pay-per-time, pay-per-call, service-level agreements, and constraints on service rates and abandonment. We show how different combinations of these contract features enable client firms to better manage vendors when there is information asymmetry about worker productivity. In particular, we focus on how different contracts can coordinate by yielding the system-optimal capacity decision by the vendor and consider how profits are allocated between the client and the vendor.

121 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The importance of patient arrival dynamics to their relative performance is demonstrated, finding that encouraging routine patients to call for same-day appointments is a key ingredient for the success of advanced-access.
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of the common practice of reserving slots for urgent patients in a primary health care practice on two service quality measures: the average number of urgent patients that are not handled during normal hours (either handled as overtime, referred to other physicians, or referred to the emergency room) and the average queue of non-urgent or routine patients. We formulate a stochastic model of appointment scheduling in a primary care practice. We conduct numerical experiments to optimize the performance of this system accounting for revenue and these two service quality measures as a function of the number of reserved slots for urgent patients. We compare traditional methods with the advanced-access system advocated by some physicians, in which urgent slots are not reserved, and evaluate the conditions under which alternative appointment scheduling mechanisms are optimal. Finally, we demonstrate the importance of patient arrival dynamics to their relative performance finding that encouraging routine patients to call for same-day appointments is a key ingredient for the success of advanced-access.

93 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The performance of the proposed SA algorithm is found to be very good, and the proposed heuristic performs better than the existing heuristics.
Abstract: The problem of scheduling in static flowshops is considered with the objective of minimizing mean or total tardiness of jobs. A heuristic algorithm based on the simulated annealing (SA) technique is developed. The salient features of the proposed SA algorithm are the development of two new perturbation schemes for use in the proposed SA algorithm and a new improvement scheme to improve the quality of the solutions. The proposed algorithm is evaluated by using the benchmark problems available in the literature. The performance of the proposed SA algorithm is found to be very good, and the proposed heuristic performs better than the existing heuristics.

75 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the efficacy of different asset transfer mechanisms and provide policy recommendations for the design of humanitarian supply chains, and show that allowing aid programs the flexibility of transferring primary resources improves the efficiency of the system by yielding greater social welfare than when this flexibility does not exist.
Abstract: We analyze the efficacy of different asset transfer mechanisms and provide policy recommendations for the design of humanitarian supply chains. As a part of their preparedness effort, humanitarian organizations often make decisions on resource investments ex ante because doing so allows for rapid response if an adverse event occurs. However, programs typically operate under funding constraints and donor earmarks with autonomous decision-making authority resting with the local entities, which makes the design of efficient humanitarian supply chains a challenging problem. We formulate this problem in an agency setting with two independent aid programs, where different asset transfer mechanisms are considered and where investments in resources are of two types: primary resources that are needed for providing the aid and infrastructural investments that improve the operation of the aid program in using the primary resources. The primary resources are acquired from earmarked donations. We show that allowing aid programs the flexibility of transferring primary resources improves the efficiency of the system by yielding greater social welfare than when this flexibility does not exist. More importantly, we show that a central entity that can acquire primary resources from one program and sell them to the other program can further improve system efficiency by providing a mechanism that facilitates the transfer of primary resources and eliminates losses from gaming. This outcome is achieved without depriving the individual aid programs of their decision-making autonomy while maintaining the constraints under which they operate. We find that outcomes with centralized resource transfer but decentralized infrastructural investments by the aid programs are the same as with a completely centralized system (where both resource transfer and infrastructural investments are centralized).

69 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown that while pull-to-center is present in aggregate data, it does not adequately describe the population of individual decision makers, who are found to be highly heterogeneous.
Abstract: In the newsvendor problem, a pull-to-center effect has been asserted, whereby subjects are said to order a quantity between the mean of the demand distribution and the expected profit-maximizing quantity. These claims have only been examined using group-level aggregate statistics. Looking at individual-level data from an previously published study and a new experiment, the current paper shows that while pull-to-center is present in aggregate data, it does not adequately describe the population of individual decision makers, who are found to be highly heterogeneous. Methodological implications and future research directions are discussed.

59 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A survey of the recent literature on call center operations management can be found in this article, where the authors identify a handful of broad themes for future investigation while also pointing out several very specific research opportunities.
Abstract: Call centers are an increasingly important part of today's business world, employing millions of agents across the globe and serving as a primary customer-facing channel for firms in many different industries. Call centers have been a fertile area for operations management researchers in several domains, including forecasting, capacity planning, queueing, and personnel scheduling. In addition, as telecommunications and information technology have advanced over the past several years, the operational challenges faced by call center managers have become more complicated. Issues associated with human resources management, sales, and marketing have also become increasingly relevant to call center operations and associated academic research. In this paper, we provide a survey of the recent literature on call center operations management. Along with traditional research areas, we pay special attention to new management challenges that have been caused by emerging technologies, to behavioral issues associated with both call center agents and customers, and to the interface between call center operations and sales and marketing. We identify a handful of broad themes for future investigation while also pointing out several very specific research opportunities.

776 citations

01 Jan 2009

693 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Two new IG algorithms are proposed for a complex flowshop problem that results from the consideration of sequence dependent setup times on machines, a characteristic that is often found in industrial settings.

367 citations