讲座嘉宾：Yichuan Ding, McGill University

讲座时间：2024年6月18日13:30–14:30

讲座地点：同济大厦A楼206室

讲座摘要：

In this study, we examine a scenario where each customer strategically selects their arrival times at a queue, aiming to minimize their total costs, which include waiting, tardiness, and earliness costs. Building on the mixed strategy framework characterized by \citet{haviv2013arrive}, which provides a closed-form arrival time distribution, our focus extends to the transient behavior of this system in presence of irrational customers, in which case it is not yet known whether an equilibrium exists or whether the system would converge to the equilibrium. We introduce a dynamic choice model to describe customers’ behavior in a repeated game setting. We empirically validate this model using data from a large endoscopy department of a major hospital in China, operating on a first-come-first-served basis. The empirical result supports the efficacy of this dynamic choice model in capturing the adaptive strategies of patients concerning their arrival times. Leveraging this model, we prove that there exists a unique equilibrium and the system converges to this equilibrium under both the fluid model and the M/M/1 queue model. Furthermore, we formulate a dynamic control problem to characterize the optimal information sharing policy, suggesting that service providers may decrease social cost by deliberately modulating the communication of waiting time information to patients. Further examination of social cost unveils that increasing earliness cost can, counter-intuitively, detract from social cost at equilibrium.

讲座嘉宾简介：

Dr. Yichuan Ding is currently an associate professor in the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University. He has been honored as the Desautels Faculty Scholar. Dr. Ding currently serves as the director of the Global Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management Program in the faculty. Dr. Ding obtained his PhD in management science and engineering from Stanford University. His research interests include optimization, queueing, and data analytics, as well as their applications in healthcare delivery systems, including emergency department operations, outpatient care, operation rooms, intensive care unit, and organ transplant. He has published on top-tier academic journals including operations research, mathematics of operations research, manufacturing and service operations management, and production and operations management. Dr. Ding was the winner of the 2023 POMS College of health care operations management best paper competition, the finalist of the 2019 Pierskalla Best Paper Competition, and the finalist of the 2017 INFORMS behavioural operations management best working paper competition. He currently serves as the associate editor for Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (M&SOM), Decision Sciences, and Service Sciences.