Over 97% of the power generation capacity to be installed from 2021 to 2050 in the U.S. is expected to be powered by wind, solar, and natural gas. Meanwhile, large-scale battery systems are planned to support the power systems. It is paramount that policy makers and electric utilities understand...

In this paper, we model a firm that can reduce its carbon footprint in the presence of a segment of eco-conscious consumers, who consider the product's carbon footprint when making purchasing decisions. The firm can reduce its controllable emissions, at increased fixed and variable costs, and it...

We study the competition between two remanufacturers in the acquisition of used products and the sales of remanufactured products. One firm has a market advantage; we consider two separate cases where either firm could have an acquisition advantage. The problem is formulated as a simultaneous...

We investigate when and how an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) should offer a trade-in rebate to recover used products, in order to achieve better price discrimination and weaken competition from third-party remanufacturers (3PRs). This paper is motivated by a major IT equipment OEM, which...

Consider a retailer using sponsored search marketing together with dynamic pricing. The retailer’s bid on a search keyword affects the retailer’s rank among the search results. The higher the rank, the higher the customer traffic and the customers’ willingness-to-pay will be. Thus, the...

We consider a variation of the economic order quantity (EOQ) model where cumulative holding cost is a nonlinear function of time. This problem has been studied by Weiss (1982), and we here show how it is an approximation of the optimal order quantity for perishable goods, such as milk, and...

Problem Definition: Combined heat and power (CHP) plants generate electricity and useful heat at the same time, reaching high efficiencies. There are many benefits to utilities of having CHP plants in their portfolio, including increasing power reliability, reducing transmission losses, and...

In this note, I present a methodology that computes the value to a decision maker of a state variable in a Markov decision process (MDP). I consider an MDP where the state is a vector comprised of multiple state variables, and state and action spaces are finite. I then provide a mixed-integer...

Some firms (e.g. Intel and Medtronics) use a time-pacing strategy for product development (PD), introducing new generations at regular intervals. If the firm adopts a fast pace (introducing frequently), it prematurely cannibalizes its old generation, incurring high development costs, while if it...