College of Business - City University of Hong Kong AACSB International EQUIS - European Quality Improvement System
Research Seminar

Research Seminar

Seminar: Online Resource Allocation with Limited Flexibility

Abstract: We consider a class of online resource allocation problems in which there are several types of resources with limited initial inventory and several demand classes. The resources are flexible in that each type of resources can serve more than one demand class. In this talk, we focus on a special class of structures with limited flexibility, the long chain design, which has been an important concept in the design of sparse flexible processes. We study the long chain design in an online stochastic environment where the requests are drawn repeatedly and independently from a known probability distribution over the different demand classes. Also, the decision on how to address each request must be made immediately upon its arrival. We show the effectiveness of the long chain design in mitigating supply-demand mismatch under a simple myopic online allocation policy. In particular, we provide an upper bound on the expected total number of lost sales that is irrespective of how large the market size is. Joint work with Arash Asadpour and Jiawei Zhang.
Date: 7 October 2016
Time: 11:00am - 12:00noon
Speaker: Dr Xuan Wang
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Venue: Room 7-207, 7/F, Academic 3

[ Back ]