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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000., Includes bibliographical references (p. 63)., by Timothy Brian Frederick., S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-90)., The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for making annual vaccine strains recommendation to countries around the globe. However, various studies have found that the WHO vaccine selection strategy has not been effective in some years. This motivates the search for a better strategy for choosing vaccine strains. In this work, we use recent results from theoretical immunology to formulate the vaccine selection problem as a discrete-time stochastic dynamic program with a high-dimensional continuous state space. We discuss the techniques that were developed for solving this difficult dynamic program, and present an effective and robust heuristic policy. We compare the performance of the heuristic policy, the follow policy, and the no-vaccine policy and show that the heuristic policy is the best among the three. After taking the cost of implementation into account, however, we conclude that the WHO policy is a cost-effective influenza vaccine strain selection policy., by Joseph T. Wu., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-90)., The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for making annual vaccine strains recommendation to countries around the globe. However, various studies have found that the WHO vaccine selection strategy has not been effective in some years. This motivates the search for a better strategy for choosing vaccine strains. In this work, we use recent results from theoretical immunology to formulate the vaccine selection problem as a discrete-time stochastic dynamic program with a high-dimensional continuous state space. We discuss the techniques that were developed for solving this difficult dynamic program, and present an effective and robust heuristic policy. We compare the performance of the heuristic policy, the follow policy, and the no-vaccine policy and show that the heuristic policy is the best among the three. After taking the cost of implementation into account, however, we conclude that the WHO policy is a cost-effective influenza vaccine strain selection policy., by Joseph T. Wu., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-90)., The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for making annual vaccine strains recommendation to countries around the globe. However, various studies have found that the WHO vaccine selection strategy has not been effective in some years. This motivates the search for a better strategy for choosing vaccine strains. In this work, we use recent results from theoretical immunology to formulate the vaccine selection problem as a discrete-time stochastic dynamic program with a high-dimensional continuous state space. We discuss the techniques that were developed for solving this difficult dynamic program, and present an effective and robust heuristic policy. We compare the performance of the heuristic policy, the follow policy, and the no-vaccine policy and show that the heuristic policy is the best among the three. After taking the cost of implementation into account, however, we conclude that the WHO policy is a cost-effective influenza vaccine strain selection policy., by Joseph T. Wu., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-90)., The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for making annual vaccine strains recommendation to countries around the globe. However, various studies have found that the WHO vaccine selection strategy has not been effective in some years. This motivates the search for a better strategy for choosing vaccine strains. In this work, we use recent results from theoretical immunology to formulate the vaccine selection problem as a discrete-time stochastic dynamic program with a high-dimensional continuous state space. We discuss the techniques that were developed for solving this difficult dynamic program, and present an effective and robust heuristic policy. We compare the performance of the heuristic policy, the follow policy, and the no-vaccine policy and show that the heuristic policy is the best among the three. After taking the cost of implementation into account, however, we conclude that the WHO policy is a cost-effective influenza vaccine strain selection policy., by Joseph T. Wu., Ph.D.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for making annual vaccine strains recommendation to countries around the globe. However, various studies have found that the WHO vaccine selection strategy has not been effective in some years. This motivates the search for a better strategy for choosing vaccine strains. In this work, we use recent results from theoretical immunology to formulate the vaccine selection problem as a discrete-time stochastic dynamic program with a high-dimensional continuous state space. We discuss the techniques that were developed for solving this difficult dynamic program, and present an effective and robust heuristic policy. We compare the performance of the heuristic policy, the follow policy, and the no-vaccine policy and show that the heuristic policy is the best among the three. After taking the cost of implementation into account, however, we conclude that the WHO policy is a cost-effective influenza vaccine strain selection policy., by Joseph T. Wu., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-90).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1992., Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-109)., by Michael Howard Veatch., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85)., This thesis studies two operations management topics in online auctions, and is divided into two parts. Motivated by the increasing use of ShopBots to scan Internet auctions, the first part of the thesis analytically examines whether or not two competing auctioneers selling the same commodity should share, or pool, some or all of their bidders. Under pooling, the bidding population is represented by three compartments: bidders dedicated to auction 1, bidders dedicated to auction 2, and pooled bidders participating in both auctions simultaneously. Under a bidder strategy shown to induce a Bayesian equilibrium, a closed form expression for the auctioneers' expected revenue under pooling is found, and pooling is recommended where it produces a greater expected revenue than no pooling (i.e., our objective is revenue maximization). Pooling is generally found to be beneficial as long as the two auctions are not too asymmetric and the underlying valuation distribution has certain concavity characteristics. Asymptotic order statistic arguments are used where explicit characterizations are intractable. The second part of the thesis considers a manufacturer who uses a reverse, or procurement, auction to determine which supplier will be awarded a contract. Each bid consists of a price and a set of non-price attributes (e.g., quality, lead time). The manufacturer is assumed to know the suppliers' cost functions (in terms of the non-price attributes). We analyze how the manufacturer chooses a scoring rule (i.e., a function that ranks the bids in terms of the price and non-price attributes) that attempts to maximize his own utility. Under the assumption that suppliers submit their myopic best-response bids (i.e., they choose their minimum-cost bid to achieve any given score), our proposed scoring rule indeed maximizes the manufacturer's utility within the open-ascending format., (cont.) The analysis reveals connections between the manufacturer's utility maximization problem and various geometric aspects of the manufacturer's utility and the suppliers' cost functions., by Damian Ronald Beil., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1992., Includes bibliographical references., by Philippe B. Chevalier., Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998., Includes bibliographical references (p. 79)., This thesis describes work done during a Leaders for Manufacturing internship at Intel. At the broadest level, this work relates to the importance of controlling and monitoring measurement processes just as one controls the "fundamental" processes being measured. Without such control there can be no confidence in the integrity of the data describing the fundamental process. More specifically, the project assessed the variability that characterized the critical dimension measurements of one specific layer. It was shown that there was significant operator variability, related primarily to several common types of mismeasurement, that could not be monitored using standard production data. Other potential sources of variability were also investigated but were found to be less important. Various steps were undertaken to reduce the observed operator variability. As part of this effort an anonymous, automated feedback system was developed and piloted to give operators feedback on their measurements using a standard structure. Although the data from the pilot was inconclusive, the need to monitor measurement variability seems clear. Finally, the thesis recommends changing the production system so that information on measure­ment processes can be asceri.ained from standard production data. It also makes specific recommendations that while not addressing the control of the measurement process, could make the system less susceptible to variation., by Elisabetta Cortesi., S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998., Includes bibliographical references (p. 79)., This thesis describes work done during a Leaders for Manufacturing internship at Intel. At the broadest level, this work relates to the importance of controlling and monitoring measurement processes just as one controls the "fundamental" processes being measured. Without such control there can be no confidence in the integrity of the data describing the fundamental process. More specifically, the project assessed the variability that characterized the critical dimension measurements of one specific layer. It was shown that there was significant operator variability, related primarily to several common types of mismeasurement, that could not be monitored using standard production data. Other potential sources of variability were also investigated but were found to be less important. Various steps were undertaken to reduce the observed operator variability. As part of this effort an anonymous, automated feedback system was developed and piloted to give operators feedback on their measurements using a standard structure. Although the data from the pilot was inconclusive, the need to monitor measurement variability seems clear. Finally, the thesis recommends changing the production system so that information on measure­ment processes can be asceri.ained from standard production data. It also makes specific recommendations that while not addressing the control of the measurement process, could make the system less susceptible to variation., by Elisabetta Cortesi., S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-96)., by Latife Beril Toktay., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1996., Includes bibliographical references (p. [141]-145)., by David Maxwell Markowitz., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2000., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-112)., This thesis describes two applications of Operations Research to the field of industrial procurement, addressing problems encountered in supplier selection and supplier control, respectively. The first part addresses the problem of designing multi-item procurement auctions in capacity-constrained environments. Using insights from classical auction theory, we construct an optimization based auction mechanism ("Smart Market") relying on the dynamic resolution of a linear program minimizing the buyer's cost under the suppliers' capacity constraints. Based on the optimal allocation corresponding to each set of bids, suppliers can respond by modifying their offers, giving rise to a dynamic competitive bidding process. A first contribution of our work is the solution we develop to assist suppliers, a bidding suggestion device based on a myopic best response (MBR) calculation solving an inverse optimization problem. The second main contribution is the analytical study of the bid profile sequences arising in this smart market within a game-theoretic framework assuming linear costs for the suppliers. Under a particularly weak behavioral assumption and some symmetry requirements, we establish an explicit upper bound for the winning bids when the auction terminates as a function of the market environment parameters. This bound constitutes a performance guarantee from the buyer's perspective, and provides insights on how capacity constraints affect relative market power. We then formulate a complete behavioral model and solution methodology based on the MBR rationale and the concept of local Nash Equilibrium, and argue its realism. We derive analytically some structural and convergence properties of the MBR dynamics in the simplest non-trivial market environment, suggesting further possible design improvements, and obtain insights on market behavior, efficiency and incentive compatibility issues through numerical simulations. In particular, experiments tend to show that supplie, by Jérémie Gallien., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1991., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83)., Jihong Ou., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1995., Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-147)., by Rodrigo Rubio Maqueo., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1996., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-260)., by Stefanos A. Zenios., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85)., This thesis studies two operations management topics in online auctions, and is divided into two parts. Motivated by the increasing use of ShopBots to scan Internet auctions, the first part of the thesis analytically examines whether or not two competing auctioneers selling the same commodity should share, or pool, some or all of their bidders. Under pooling, the bidding population is represented by three compartments: bidders dedicated to auction 1, bidders dedicated to auction 2, and pooled bidders participating in both auctions simultaneously. Under a bidder strategy shown to induce a Bayesian equilibrium, a closed form expression for the auctioneers' expected revenue under pooling is found, and pooling is recommended where it produces a greater expected revenue than no pooling (i.e., our objective is revenue maximization). Pooling is generally found to be beneficial as long as the two auctions are not too asymmetric and the underlying valuation distribution has certain concavity characteristics. Asymptotic order statistic arguments are used where explicit characterizations are intractable. The second part of the thesis considers a manufacturer who uses a reverse, or procurement, auction to determine which supplier will be awarded a contract. Each bid consists of a price and a set of non-price attributes (e.g., quality, lead time). The manufacturer is assumed to know the suppliers' cost functions (in terms of the non-price attributes). We analyze how the manufacturer chooses a scoring rule (i.e., a function that ranks the bids in terms of the price and non-price attributes) that attempts to maximize his own utility. Under the assumption that suppliers submit their myopic best-response bids (i.e., they choose their minimum-cost bid to achieve any given score), our proposed scoring rule indeed maximizes the manufacturer's utility within the open-ascending format., (cont.) The analysis reveals connections between the manufacturer's utility maximization problem and various geometric aspects of the manufacturer's utility and the suppliers' cost functions., by Damian Ronald Beil., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2001., Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-154)., This thesis presents two applications of the prototypical make-to-stock queue model that are mainly motivated by supply chain management and e-commerce issues. In the first part, we consider the decentralized version of the make-to-stock model. Two different agents that we call the supplier and the retailer control production and finish goods inventory level independently. The retailer carries finished goods inventory to service an exogenous demand and specifies a policy for replenishing his/her inventory from the upstream supplier. The supplier, on the other hand, chooses the capacity of his manufacturing facility. Demand is backlogged and both agents share the backorder cost. In addition, a linear inventory holding cost is charged to the retailer, and a linear cost for building production capacity is incurred by the supplier. The inventory level, demand rate and cost parameters are common knowledge to both agents. Under the continuous state approximation that the M/M/1 queue has an exponential rather than geometric steady-state distribution, we characterize the optimal centralized and Nash solutions, and show that a contract with linear transfer payments based on backorder, inventory and capacity levels coordinates the system in the absence of participation constraints., (cont.) We also derive explicit formulas to assess the inefficiency of the Nash equilibrium, compare the agents' decision variables and the customer service level of the centralized versus Nash solutions, and identify conditions under which a coordinating contract is desirable for both agents. In the second part, we return to the centralized version of the make-to-stock model and analyze the situation where the price that the end customers are willing to pay for the good changes dynamically and stochastically over time. We also as- sume that demand is fully backlogged and that holding and backordering costs are linearly incurred by the manufacturer. In this setting, we formulate the stochastic control problem faced by the manager. That is, at each moment of time and based on the current inventory position, the manager decides (i) whether or not to accept an incoming order and (ii) whether or not to idle the machine. We use the expected long-term average criteria to compute profits. Under heavy traffic conditions, we approximate the problem by a dynamic diffusion control problem and derive optimality (Bellman) conditions. Given the mathematical complexity of the Bellman equations, numerical and approximated solutions are presented as well as a set of computational experiments showing the quality of the proposed policies., by René Caldentey., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1992., Includes bibliographical references., by Philippe B. Chevalier., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1996., Includes bibliographical references (p. [141]-145)., by David Maxwell Markowitz., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85)., This thesis studies two operations management topics in online auctions, and is divided into two parts. Motivated by the increasing use of ShopBots to scan Internet auctions, the first part of the thesis analytically examines whether or not two competing auctioneers selling the same commodity should share, or pool, some or all of their bidders. Under pooling, the bidding population is represented by three compartments: bidders dedicated to auction 1, bidders dedicated to auction 2, and pooled bidders participating in both auctions simultaneously. Under a bidder strategy shown to induce a Bayesian equilibrium, a closed form expression for the auctioneers' expected revenue under pooling is found, and pooling is recommended where it produces a greater expected revenue than no pooling (i.e., our objective is revenue maximization). Pooling is generally found to be beneficial as long as the two auctions are not too asymmetric and the underlying valuation distribution has certain concavity characteristics. Asymptotic order statistic arguments are used where explicit characterizations are intractable. The second part of the thesis considers a manufacturer who uses a reverse, or procurement, auction to determine which supplier will be awarded a contract. Each bid consists of a price and a set of non-price attributes (e.g., quality, lead time). The manufacturer is assumed to know the suppliers' cost functions (in terms of the non-price attributes). We analyze how the manufacturer chooses a scoring rule (i.e., a function that ranks the bids in terms of the price and non-price attributes) that attempts to maximize his own utility. Under the assumption that suppliers submit their myopic best-response bids (i.e., they choose their minimum-cost bid to achieve any given score), our proposed scoring rule indeed maximizes the manufacturer's utility within the open-ascending format., (cont.) The analysis reveals connections between the manufacturer's utility maximization problem and various geometric aspects of the manufacturer's utility and the suppliers' cost functions., by Damian Ronald Beil., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1991., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83)., Jihong Ou., Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998., Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-106)., by Todd Cooper., S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1995., Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-147)., by Rodrigo Rubio Maqueo., Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998., Includes bibliographical references (p. 79)., This thesis describes work done during a Leaders for Manufacturing internship at Intel. At the broadest level, this work relates to the importance of controlling and monitoring measurement processes just as one controls the "fundamental" processes being measured. Without such control there can be no confidence in the integrity of the data describing the fundamental process. More specifically, the project assessed the variability that characterized the critical dimension measurements of one specific layer. It was shown that there was significant operator variability, related primarily to several common types of mismeasurement, that could not be monitored using standard production data. Other potential sources of variability were also investigated but were found to be less important. Various steps were undertaken to reduce the observed operator variability. As part of this effort an anonymous, automated feedback system was developed and piloted to give operators feedback on their measurements using a standard structure. Although the data from the pilot was inconclusive, the need to monitor measurement variability seems clear. Finally, the thesis recommends changing the production system so that information on measure­ment processes can be asceri.ained from standard production data. It also makes specific recommendations that while not addressing the control of the measurement process, could make the system less susceptible to variation., by Elisabetta Cortesi., S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1996., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-260)., by Stefanos A. Zenios., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1996., Includes bibliographical references (p. [141]-145)., by David Maxwell Markowitz., Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998., Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-106)., by Todd Cooper., S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1991., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83)., Jihong Ou., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-96)., by Latife Beril Toktay., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2000., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-112)., This thesis describes two applications of Operations Research to the field of industrial procurement, addressing problems encountered in supplier selection and supplier control, respectively. The first part addresses the problem of designing multi-item procurement auctions in capacity-constrained environments. Using insights from classical auction theory, we construct an optimization based auction mechanism ("Smart Market") relying on the dynamic resolution of a linear program minimizing the buyer's cost under the suppliers' capacity constraints. Based on the optimal allocation corresponding to each set of bids, suppliers can respond by modifying their offers, giving rise to a dynamic competitive bidding process. A first contribution of our work is the solution we develop to assist suppliers, a bidding suggestion device based on a myopic best response (MBR) calculation solving an inverse optimization problem. The second main contribution is the analytical study of the bid profile sequences arising in this smart market within a game-theoretic framework assuming linear costs for the suppliers. Under a particularly weak behavioral assumption and some symmetry requirements, we establish an explicit upper bound for the winning bids when the auction terminates as a function of the market environment parameters. This bound constitutes a performance guarantee from the buyer's perspective, and provides insights on how capacity constraints affect relative market power. We then formulate a complete behavioral model and solution methodology based on the MBR rationale and the concept of local Nash Equilibrium, and argue its realism. We derive analytically some structural and convergence properties of the MBR dynamics in the simplest non-trivial market environment, suggesting further possible design improvements, and obtain insights on market behavior, efficiency and incentive compatibility issues through numerical simulations. In particular, experiments tend to show that supplie, by Jérémie Gallien., Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1991., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83)., Jihong Ou., Ph.D.

Jihong Ou., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1991., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83).

by David Maxwell Markowitz., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1996., Includes bibliographical references (p. [141]-145).

by Stefanos A. Zenios., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1996., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-260).

by Michael Howard Veatch., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1992., Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-109).

by Latife Beril Toktay., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1998., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-96).

This thesis studies two operations management topics in online auctions, and is divided into two parts. Motivated by the increasing use of ShopBots to scan Internet auctions, the first part of the thesis analytically examines whether or not two competing auctioneers selling the same commodity should share, or pool, some or all of their bidders. Under pooling, the bidding population is represented by three compartments: bidders dedicated to auction 1, bidders dedicated to auction 2, and pooled bidders participating in both auctions simultaneously. Under a bidder strategy shown to induce a Bayesian equilibrium, a closed form expression for the auctioneers' expected revenue under pooling is found, and pooling is recommended where it produces a greater expected revenue than no pooling (i.e., our objective is revenue maximization). Pooling is generally found to be beneficial as long as the two auctions are not too asymmetric and the underlying valuation distribution has certain concavity characteristics. Asymptotic order statistic arguments are used where explicit characterizations are intractable. The second part of the thesis considers a manufacturer who uses a reverse, or procurement, auction to determine which supplier will be awarded a contract. Each bid consists of a price and a set of non-price attributes (e.g., quality, lead time). The manufacturer is assumed to know the suppliers' cost functions (in terms of the non-price attributes). We analyze how the manufacturer chooses a scoring rule (i.e., a function that ranks the bids in terms of the price and non-price attributes) that attempts to maximize his own utility. Under the assumption that suppliers submit their myopic best-response bids (i.e., they choose their minimum-cost bid to achieve any given score), our proposed scoring rule indeed maximizes the manufacturer's utility within the open-ascending format., (cont.) The analysis reveals connections between the manufacturer's utility maximization problem and various geometric aspects of the manufacturer's utility and the suppliers' cost functions., by Damian Ronald Beil., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2003., Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2000., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-112)., This thesis describes two applications of Operations Research to the field of industrial procurement, addressing problems encountered in supplier selection and supplier control, respectively. The first part addresses the problem of designing multi-item procurement auctions in capacity-constrained environments. Using insights from classical auction theory, we construct an optimization based auction mechanism ("Smart Market") relying on the dynamic resolution of a linear program minimizing the buyer's cost under the suppliers' capacity constraints. Based on the optimal allocation corresponding to each set of bids, suppliers can respond by modifying their offers, giving rise to a dynamic competitive bidding process. A first contribution of our work is the solution we develop to assist suppliers, a bidding suggestion device based on a myopic best response (MBR) calculation solving an inverse optimization problem. The second main contribution is the analytical study of the bid profile sequences arising in this smart market within a game-theoretic framework assuming linear costs for the suppliers. Under a particularly weak behavioral assumption and some symmetry requirements, we establish an explicit upper bound for the winning bids when the auction terminates as a function of the market environment parameters. This bound constitutes a performance guarantee from the buyer's perspective, and provides insights on how capacity constraints affect relative market power. We then formulate a complete behavioral model and solution methodology based on the MBR rationale and the concept of local Nash Equilibrium, and argue its realism. We derive analytically some structural and convergence properties of the MBR dynamics in the simplest non-trivial market environment, suggesting further possible design improvements, and obtain insights on market behavior, efficiency and incentive compatibility issues through numerical simulations. In particular, experiments tend to show that supplie, by Jérémie Gallien., Ph.D.