In this paper we propose a covering problem where the covering radius of a facility is controlled by the decision-maker; the cost of achieving a certain covering distance is assumed to be a monotonically increasing function of the distance (i.e., it costs more to establish a facility with a...

We study three problems on supply chain location and inventory under uncertainty. In Chapter 2, we study the inventory purchasing and allocation problem in a movie rental chain under demand uncertainty. We formulate this problem as a newsvendor-like problem with multiple rental opportunities. We...

Pricing and capacity allocation are two important decisions that a service provider needs to make to maximize service quality and profit. This thesis attempts to address the pricing and capacity planning problems in operations management from the following three aspects.We first study a capacity...

Spatial development plans often aim at defining the level of hierarchy to assign to the urban centers of a region, each level being characterized by a class of facilities. The services provided at the facilities typically include education, health care, public safety, and justice. In this paper...

Spatial planners often make “comprehensive†decisions on the location of public service facilities by using the concept of urban hierarchy: population centers at the upper level of the hierarchy (typically large cities) get the highest level facilities, such as specialized hospitals...