Capacity allocation and downsizing decisions in project portfolio management.

This paper aims to gain insight into capacity allocation and downsizing decisions in project portfolio management. By downsizing, we mean reducing the scale or size of a project and thereby changing the project's content. We first determine the amount of critical capacity that is optimally allocated to strategic projects with deterministic or stochastic workloads for a single-period problem when the impact of downsizing is known. In order to solve the multi-period problem, we have modeled the behavior of the portfolio in subsequent periods as a single project for which the return on investment can be estimated. Secondly, we investigate how the scarcity of resources affects the (expected) value of projects. The independent (expected) project value is calculated under the assumption of unlimited capacity; in contrast, the dependent (expected) project value incorporates the resource constraints. We find that the dependent project value is equal to the independent project value when the return on investment of the portfolio is sufficiently low. In addition, we determine the relation between the return on investment of the portfolio and the value of a project and conclude that the impact of resource scarcity on the value of a project cannot be fully captured by the common financial practice of adapting the discount rate with the estimated return on investment.Project portfolio management; Downsizing; Stochastic workload;

Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a review of the state of the art in OR/MS

We provide a structured overview of the typical decisions to be made in resource capacity planning and control in health care, and a review of relevant OR/MS articles for each planning decision. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, to position the planning decisions, a taxonomy is presented. This taxonomy provides health care managers and OR/MS researchers with a method to identify, break down and classify planning and control decisions. Second, following the taxonomy, for six health care services, we provide an exhaustive specification of planning and control decisions in resource capacity planning and control. For each planning and control decision, we structurally review the key OR/MS articles and the OR/MS methods and techniques that are applied in the literature to support decision making