We propose and analyze a novel framework to understand the role of non-instrumental information sharing in service operations management, i.e., information shared by the firm not to affect consumers’ actions, but to better manage their experience in the firm’s process. To this end, we model...

The goals of the Guaranteed Support Price (GSP) scheme, adopted by several developing countries to support their farmers and the underprivileged population, are threefold: (a) as a supply-side incentive, to ensure high output from the farmers, (b) as a demand-side provisioning tool, to subsidize...

Problem Definition and Academic/Practical Relevance: Organizations routinely introduce hitherto-unexplored interventions aimed at improving their supply chains. Consider a principal (e.g., a firm or a social planner) that implements a “seemingly-helpful” intervention, broadly interpreted as...

"Cloud Kitchens" are delivery-only facilities that house multiple restaurants. Food-delivery platforms operate such kitchens to exploit two advantages: (i) Location advantage, arising due to a cloud-kitchen's central location this enables lower delivery times to customers. (ii) Consolidation...

Problem definition: Revenue management in railways distinguishes itself from that in traditional sectors such as airline, hotel, and fashion retail, in several important ways: (i) Capacity is substantially more flexible, in the sense that changes to the capacity of a train can often be made...

We study the design of crowd-sourcing contests in settings where the outputs of the contestants are quantifiable - e.g., a data-science challenge. This setting is in contrast to those where the output is only qualitative and cannot be objectively quantified - e.g., when the goal of the contest...

We study the problem of managing queues in online food-ordering services where customers, who place orders online and pick up at the store, are offered a common quote time, i.e., the promised pick-up time minus the time the order is placed. The objective is to minimize the long-run average...

We study fixed-dimensional stochastic dynamic programs in a discrete setting over a finite horizon. Under the primary assumption that the cost-to-go functions are discrete L♮-convex, we propose a pseudo-polynomial time approximation scheme that solves this problem to within an arbitrary...

We study several dynamic, stochastic inventory control models with integer demands: the newsvendor model, its multi-period extension and a single-product, multi-echelon assembly model. Equivalent linear programs are formulated for the corresponding stochastic dynamic programs, and integrality...

To stay competitive, firms regularly invest in innovation by supporting internal capital projects (funded and executed in-house) that explore new products and operational improvements. Each year, in a highly competitive process, managers from different functional units of the firm submit...