Provider Selection Framework for Bundled Payments in Healthcare Services

Identification of competitive healthcare providers is an important issue for the successful operation of a bundled payment reimbursement program. We develop a healthcare provider selection framework via data envelopment analysis (DEA) and combinatorial auction (CA). Our goal is to cover target regions with adequate numbers of healthcare providers to optimally deploy a bundled payment program across these regions. Our methodology balances bid prices and performance of applicants to cover the entire regions in an equitable manner, allows for provider preferences in selecting the bundle of services, and determines winners considering service quality, efficiency and the price of the bundles. Our work provides a practical and systematic selection procedure for payers compared to the extant subjective selection methods

Minimizing makespan in flowshops with pallet requirements: computational complexity

Studies the minimization in flowshops with pallet requirements. Importance of pallets in automated or flexible manufacturing environments; Mounting and dismounting of work pieces; Planning problems involved

On Throughput Maximization in Constant Travel-Time Robotic Cells

We consider the problem of scheduling operations in bufferless robotic cells that produce identical parts. The objective is to find a cyclic sequence of robot moves that minimizes the long-run average time to produce a part or, equivalently, maximizes the throughput rate. The robot can be moved in simple cycles that produce one unit or, in more complicated cycles, that produce multiple units. Because one-unit cycles are the easiest to understand, implement, and control, they are widely used in industry. We analyze one-unit cycles for a class of robotic cells called constant travel-time robotic cells. We complete a structural analysis of the class of one-unit cycles and obtain a polynomial time algorithm for finding an optimal one-unit cycle. Constant travel-time robotic cells are used in real manufacturing operations that the authors have encountered during their interactions with companies. The results and the analysis in this paper offer practitioners (i) a tool to experiment with and study the design of a proposed robotic cell during a prototyping exercise, (ii) a lower bound on the throughput of a robotic cell to help them make an informed assessment of the ultimate productivity level, and (iii) a benchmark throughput level (for comparison purposes) for robotic cells whose operations differ slightly from those discussed in this paper.maufacturing, robotic cell, identical parts, polynomial time algorithm

Optimal Shipping, Collaboration, and Outsourcing Decisions in a Hybrid Cross-docking Supply Chain

This repository contains code associated with our accepted paper in IISE Transactions titled "Optimal Shipping, Collaboration, and Outsourcing Decisions in a Hybrid Cross-docking Supply Chain." To briefly summarize, 1. value of collaboration.zip - includes code to evaluate the value of upstream collaboration and downstream collaboration in a hybrid cross-docking supply chain. The "upstream" folder includes code to evaluate the upstream collaboration benefits to the cross-dock in a varying number of products (q=2, 4, 6). The "downstream" folder includes code to evaluate the downstream collaboration benefits to the oil-well facilities (OWFs) in a varying number of products (q=2, 4, 6). 2. outsourcing.zip - includes code to obtain the optimal outsourcing decision for oil well facilities and pricing decisions of the logistics provider using the sample approximation method. The "best response (OWF-outsourcing-decision)" folder includes code to obtain the threshold for each individual OWF's optimal outsourcing decision, such that for any outsourcing price lower than the threshold, the OWF outsources to the logistics provider. Given the OWFs' best responses, the "outsourcing price" folder includes code to evaluate the optimal outsourcing price for the logistics provider. The code evaluates the optimal pricing strategy under a varying number of OWFs (M=1,2,3,4) in supplemental materials. To conduct the numerical experiment in the paper, the author team used the ILOG AMPL CPLEX system (ILOG AMPL CPLEX 2021) on Intel Core i7-8650 CPU with a 2.11 GHz processor and 16 GB of RAM

A heuristic for scheduling two-machine no-wait flow shops with anticipatory setups

We consider a problem of scheduling jobs in two-machine no-wait flow shops for which the objective is to minimize the makespan. Each job, upon completion of its processing on the first machine, must be transferred immediately to the second machine due to a no-wait in process constraint. Every job requires a setup time on each machine before it is processed. The setup on the second machine is anticipatory, since it can be performed in advance of an arriving job, and consists of two parts. During the first part of the setup, the job should not be present in the machine, while the second part of setup can be done in the presence or absence of the job. A heuristic algorithm is proposed, and its worst-case performance ratio of 4/3 is established