Optimization of manpower allocation by considering customer relationship management criteria and uncertainty conditions in car dealerships

Purpose A mathematical mixed integer model was used in this research in order to optimize manpower allocation in car industry. The objective function of proposed model subjected to minimization of the maximum waiting time for customers in service queue and limitations included manpower allocation and time calculation for each service in each center. Methodology: Therefore, mathematical optimization methods were employed in this research. To solve the problem at small dimensions, BARON solver was used through GAMS software. Metaheuristic algorithms were used to solve the large dimensions of problem due to NP-hard nature of allocation problem. However, these algorithms have been designed based on the natural elements; hence, a stochastic procedure is applied to generate initial responses and to improve the process to obtained the final response. Therefore, proper comparisons should be done to make sure of accurate performance of such procedure. To this end, three metaheuristic algorithms of Genetic, Harmony Search and Gray Wolf were used to solve the final problem. Findings: According to the obtained computational results, gray wolf algorithm had the highest performance efficiency compared to other algorithms so it is more practical in solving the real numerical samples. Originality/Value: The objective function of proposed model subjected to minimization of the maximum waiting time for customers in service queue and limitations included manpower allocation and time calculation for each service in each center. We used three metaheuristic algorithms, Genetic, Harmony Search and Gray Wolf, to solve the final problem

Calibrating cross-training to meet demand mix variation and employee absence

We address the problem of determining the cross-training that a work team needs in order to cope with demand mix variation and absences. We consider the case in which all workers can be trained on all tasks, the workforce is a resource that determines the capacity and a complete forecasting of demand is not available. The demand mix variation that the organization wants to be able to cope with is fixed by establishing a maximum time to devote to each product. We contend that this approach is straightforward, has managerial practicality and can be applied to a broad range of practical scenarios. It is required that the demand mix variation be met, even if there are a certain level of absences. To numerically solve the mathematical problem, a constraint-based selection procedure is developed, which we term CODEMI. We provide illustrated examples demonstrating solution quality for the approximation, and we report on an illustrative set of computational cases. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. and Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) within the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS). All rights reserved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Worker Assignment in Dual Resource Constrained Assembly Job Shops with Worker Heterogeneity:An Assessment by Simulation

Most shops in practice are constrained by more than one resource. Consequently, a large body of literature on dual resource constrained shops has emerged. This research typically focuses on worker assignment rules, with attention being on when and where to move workers. In contrast, the decision concerning who to reallocate to a station has received limited attention. The limited prior work assumes workers are assigned to a new station as soon as they become available or seeks to minimise the risk of worker idleness. Using simulation, we question this assumption and show that it can be beneficial to introduce additional worker idleness to ensure workers only work at their most efficient station(s). In general, it is less likely that there are several workers available for one station than it is for there to be multiple stations available for one worker. Consequently, the Who Rule is used less frequently than the Where rule and has less of an impact on performance. Finally, considering the criticality of work orders as part of the Where Rule is important in assembly shops; but if labour is heterogeneous then the focus should be on efficiency. The findings have important implications for research and practice

Optimal Policy for Production Systems with Two Flexible Resources and TwoProducts

Manufacturing companies are facing increasing volatility in demand. As a result, there has been an emerging need for a flexible multi-period manufacturing system that uses multiple resources to produce multiple products with stochastic demands. To manage such multi-product, multi-resource systems, manufacturers need to make two decisions simultaneously: setting a production quantity for each product and allocating the limited resources dynamically among the products. Unfortunately, although the flexibility design and investment have been extensively studied, the literature has been muted on how to make production and allocation decisions optimally from an operational perspective. This article attempts to fill this literature gap by investigating a multi-period system using multiple flexible resources to produce two products. We identify the structural property of the cost functions, namely ρ-differential monotone. Based on this property, the optimal production and allocation policy can be characterized by switching curves, which divide the state space into eight or nine sub-regions based on the segmentation of decision rules. We analyze different cases in terms of production costs and resource utilization ratios, and show how they affect the optimal production and allocation decisions. Finally, we compare three heuristic policies to the optimal one to display the advantage of resource flexibility and the effectiveness of a heuristic policy. Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher’s online edition of IISE Transaction, datasets, additional tables, detailed proofs, etc

Beneficios de la polifuncionalidad laboral en la industria retail: enfoque “k-chaining” con incertidumbre en la demanda

La polifuncionalidad es una estrategia de flexibilidad laboral en la que las compañías educan a un conjunto de empleados para que éstos puedan desempeñar efectivamente un conjunto de tipos de tareas. Además, cuando los planes de polifuncionalidad son estructurados a través de políticas k-chaining es posible obtener la máxima flexibilidad para responder ante una demanda de personal incierta. A nivel estratégico, esta investigación diseña el plan de capacitación para una mano de obra polifuncional, tal que ante altos niveles de variabilidad en la demanda se pueda alcanzar los mayores ahorros en los costos de sobredotación y subdotación de personal y, a su vez, satisfacer los niveles de demanda requeridos. Se desarrollaron modelos de programación entera-mixta con demanda estocástica para resolver un problema de asignación de personal polifuncional bajo una política k-chaining con k≥2. Estos modelos fueron evaluados para manos de obra homogénea y heterogénea. Para un caso de estudio en la industria retail, los resultados mostraron que para altos niveles de variabilidad en la demanda una política k-chaining con k≥2 es más costo-efectiva que una política estricta con k=2 para alcanzar los máximos beneficios de la polifuncionalidad. Además, que los requerimientos de polifuncionalidad aumentan a medida que la incertidumbre de la demanda es mayor. También se observó que la consideración del fenómeno de aprendizaje y olvido permite obtener niveles de polifuncionalidad más ajustados a la operación real de una tienda de retail.MaestríaMagister en Ingeniería Industria

Twelve Fundamental Contemporaneous Contributions for the Advancement of Economic Thought

Research in economics has progressed significantly in the last few decades, with relevant contributions being delivered in the most important areas this science comprehends, e.g., macroeconomic theory, measurement of the economic activity, analysis of individual decision-making, finance, international economics. This chapter provides a discussion on the recent breakthroughs of the economic science, by highlighting twelve outstanding contemporaneous studies in fields that range from business cycles theory, to human capital formation, international trade models, the empirics of economic development or the application of statistical techniques to the analysis of economic phenomena. These studies were selected following several criteria: recent publication (in the last half decade) in a top scientific journal and already with a large citation record. Obviously, selecting a few prominent contributions from an extremely wide range of quality studies produced by economists in the last few years ends up by neglecting many other influential works. Nevertheless, we believe that the undertaken choice covers a series of meaningful advancements that are helping in launching the debate in many important topics in the years to come. Each one of the approached articles constitutes a piece of the best the reflection on economic theory and empirical analysis has to offer to the academy, to policy-makers and to all those that somehow rely on the progress of the economic science to optimize the respective decision-making process.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Essays on Empirical Banking

This dissertation comprises of three essays on empirical banking. The first chapter provides a brief introduction to the areas of empirical banking touched upon throughout the dissertation. Chapter 2 investigates the effects of religiously compliant deposit insurance schemes on deposit supply in six dual banking systems. Using differences-in-differences and triple-differences methodologies, it shows that Islamic banks’ depositors increase their deposit supply after the announcement of a separate Islamic deposit insurance fund. Also, former market discipline vanishes after this announcement. These findings are attributed to the fact that a separate Islamic deposit insurance fund ensures a radical departure from conventional banking, signaling a more “Sharia” compliant Islamic banking system, for which Islamic banks’ depositors ultimately reward. These results demonstrate the trade-off between the availability of funds (deposit supply) and the presence of market discipline for the design of deposit insurance schemes in banking sectors where religious sentiments matter. Chapter 3 utilizes individual-level data to examine the local effects of bank failures on wage inequality. Exploiting geographical variation in bank failures across communities shows that recent bank failures led to the widening wage gap between skilled and unskilled (skill premium) by around $ 1,000 annually. Additionally, it demonstrates that the type of capital employed in a sector determines the extent to which the effects of bank failures are transmitted to local labor markets. Especially for sectors that use knowledge-dependent capital, which cannot be pledged as collateral and therefore has to be financed internally, skill premium induced by bank failures is differentially higher. These results can unlikely be explained by other confounding factors and are consistent with knowledge-dependent capital being financed through forgone earnings of unskilled workers when total financing capacity shrinks. Finally, Chapter 4 investigates whether banks decrease their branching network following a reduction in the net interest margin. It uses the abandonment of Regulation Q as a regulatory induced funding shock that allowed but not forced banks to pay interest on demand deposits for the first time since 1933. For some banks, the funding shock was more severe as they financed their business to a larger degree with demand deposits, while other banks did so to a much lesser extent. Our results suggest that banks relying on more demand deposits decrease the number of branches they operate with by around 10%. This effect is particularly strong for smaller banks and banks which do engage to a small extent in commercial lending. Further, those banks become less risky even by reducing their geographical expansion. This is achieved by decreasing the number of branches and the number of new loans in areas with lower income

The Productivity Puzzle, Management Practices and Leadership

The research direction of this thesis is sparked by the puzzling variation in productivity among firms, underscoring the importance of understanding the drivers of productivity better. This thesis encompasses three empirical studies, each tackling a distinct challenge in productivity and management research. It is grounded in the framework of the World Management Survey (WMS), which offers a standardized approach to assess management practices and their relation to differences in performance indicators like firm productivity.The first study explores the universality of people management practices within the WMS framework across fourteen countries. It focuses on the role of firm-level human capital, and the cultural values and employment protection legislation in firms’ institutional environment. The results suggest that firms’ human capital is positively associated with people management practices’ effectiveness, and that the practices are universally linked to productivity without being significantly moderated by cultural context or regulatory factors of employment protection.The second study taps into individual managers’ role and investigates the influence of CEOs' instrumental leadership behaviors alongside management practices for firm productivity. Analyzing data from Dutch manufacturing firms, it concludes that both CEO leadership behaviors and management practices independently are associated with productivity, emphasizing the unique roles of CEOs and firm management.The third study examines the link between management practices, productivity, and export performance in Dutch manufacturing firms. It finds that better-managed firms tend to have higher productivity and export revenues, suggesting a relationship between management practices’ role in firm productivity and the heterogeneity in firms’ export performances

Collective bargaining, wage setting and downward adjustments in the continental European labour market: evidence from Portugal

With the Great Recession as enduring scenery, this journey dwells in widening the acumen on Continental European Labour Markets, particularly during sizable downturns. The yacht, the Portuguese case, is one of its representative designs. The course departs with the specific mannerisms of wage setting institutions, where the first leg reasons the dynamics of collective bargaining in distressed periods, and the second focuses on the influence of trade unions in this wage setting protocol. Then, we have a regatta for an empirical structural analysis of the dynamics of the wage setting and its resilience under significant distress. The last straw deals with the interaction between the labour market institutions and firm liquidity; and its influence on the dynamics of wages and unemployment throughout recessionary periods. At the final harbour, we have drawn a consistent sketch of our yacht’s blueprints, and hopefully of those alike. As the zenith of the journey, we have broaden the knowledge about its conduct on rough waters