管理科学学术论坛之五十八

发布者:hejieqin 发布时间：2017-09-20 17:17:29 浏览数： 次 [ 返回 ]

演讲题目： Information and Pricing Effects in Two-tier Public Service Systems

演讲人： Zhe George Zhang

（Department of Decision Sciences, Western Washington University, WA, USA, & Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, BC, Canada）

时 间：2017年9月22日（五）上午10:00

地 点：嘉庚一（保欣丽英楼）409

主持人：庄伟芬副教授

摘 要:

Public service such as healthcare may be offered by both free (public) and toll (private) service providers. Such a system, called a two-tier service system, is usually subject to congestion and often modeled as two parallel queues. Customers can choose one of three options: joining the free system, joining the toll system, and balking based on the congestion in each service system and the toll price. This paper examines the effects of congestion information and price of the toll system on the system performance of the two-tier service system. We consider the performance measures from three different perspectives of customers, toll service provider, and social planner, respectively. Two information scenarios are compared. The first scenario, called a mixed information case (MI), is the one where the free system does not offer real time queue length information but the toll system does. The second scenario, called a non-real time information case (NRI), is the one where both systems do not offer real time queue length information. We propose Markovian queueing models to analyze the system performance. Several computational algorithms are developed based on the matrix analytical method. Numerical analysis is performed to generate important managerial insights for decision makers. It is found that the information effect depends on the price range and it can either improve or hurt some performance measures. Furthermore, the optimal pricing decisions for different performance measures (customer, service provider, and social planner) are different..

个人简介：

Zhe George Zhang is a professor of Management Science in the Department of Decision Sciences at Western Washington University and a professor of Operations Management in Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. He is also a long-term visiting professor of Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Zhang received his BS in Computer Science and MA in Economics from Nankai University; his MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University; and his PhD in Operations research from the University of Waterloo. Professor Zhang has published widely in journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, MSOM, POMS, IIE Transactions, IEEE Transactions, and other prestigious journals for more than 90 papers. Co-authored with Professor Tian in 2006, he published the research monograph "Vacation Queueing Models - Theory and Applications," the first book on this particular topic (now highly cited). Professor Zhang's research interests include queueing theory and applications and stochastic models for manufacturing and service systems. His publications range from highly quantitative and theoretical to qualitative and empirical types, covering applied mathematics, engineering, economics, and business. The main theme of his research is to bridge the gap between theory and application, obtaining unobservable and sometimes counter-intuitive but significant/practical management insights via modeling and quantitative analysis. Currently, he is particularly interested in the quantitative and economic analysis of the congestion problems in urban/mass transportation networks, health/medical care systems, and public service systems with both customer service quality and security concerns. As an expert in data analysis and quantitative modeling, he has consulted in industry and has given research seminars and short lectures at leading universities around the world. Dr. Zhang is the one of three Editors-in-Chief (North America Region) for new journal Queueing Models and Service Management and on the editorial board of several international journals in Operations Research and Management Science. He created the Center for Operations Research and Management Science (CORMS) at Western in 2013. CORMS promotes international collaboration and networking to support OR and MS research. (https://cbe.wwu.edu/corms/center-operations-research-and-management-science)