Sampath Kameshwaran

Outcome aware ranking in interaction networks

In this paper, we present a novel ranking technique that we developed in the context of an application that arose in a Service Delivery setting. We consider the problem of ranking agents of a service organization. The service agents typically need to interact with other service agents to accomplish the end goal of resolving customer requests. Their ranking needs to take into account two aspects: firstly, their importance in the network structure that arises as a result of their interactions, and secondly, the value generated by the interactions involving them. We highlight several other applications which have the common theme of ranking the participants of a value creation process based on the network structure of their interactions and the value generated by their interactions. We formally present the problem and describe the modeling technique which enables us to encode the value of interaction in the graph. Our ranking algorithm is based on extension of eigen value methods. We present experimental results on real-life, public domain datasets from the Internet Movie DataBase. This makes our experiments replicable and verifiable.

Bundling and pricing of product with after-sale services

Bundling is the sale of two or more products in combination as a package. In this paper, we consider the bundling and pricing of a complex durable product with the after-sales repair and maintenance services. The product and service are two different, but related markets for this scenario. The problem of bundling and pricing are considered for two product market structures: monopoly and duopoly. In the monopoly case, the decision framework is an optimisation problem, whereas for the duopoly, the strategic interactions of the two firms are modelled as a two stage non-cooperative game. These decision frameworks enable the manufacturing firms to decide upon the product-service bundling and pricing.

A Decision Framework for Location Selection in Global Supply Chains

The supply chain decision problems are becoming more complex with the globalization of businesses that spatially span across several international borders. One such strategic decision problem is the location selection problem, which determines an optimal location to build a new facility. This requires multicriteria evaluation of N alternate locations with respect to M location attributes. In this paper we develop a generic framework that can aid the decision maker in identifying and grouping the M attributes into an hierarchy for location selection in global supply chains. An hierarchical structuring is proposed with four fundamental criteria: product/process value chain, economic & political integration, resources & management, and connecting technologies. These are integral to many global business activities and the generic sub-criteria for the above are identified. This aids the decision maker to identify and group the M location attributes as a multilevel hierarchical tree. This structuring facilitates the use of analytic hierarchy process to synthesize the information about the M attributes along with the decision makers preferences, to evaluate the locations. We illustrate the applicability of the framework using a stylized example of locating a Biotech R&D center in Asia.

On Bundling and Pricing of the Service with the Product

Integration of service with product is considered as one of the innovative supply chain initiatives of the next decade. In this paper we consider the problem of product-service bundling and pricing. The product and service are two different, but related markets. We consider a complex durable product, which is economically attractive to maintain and service, than to replace. We show that a manufacturing firm that intends to bundle its service with the product, should take into account the other players in the service market as well as the product market. The problem of bundling and pricing are considered for two product market structures: monopoly and duopoly. In the monopoly case, the decision framework is an optimization problem, whereas for the duopoly, the strategic interactions of the two firms are modeled as a two stage non cooperative game. These decision frameworks enable the manufacturing firms to decide upon the product-service bundling and pricing.

Ecosystem-Aware Global Supply Chain Management

Over the last two decades, several textbooks, research papers, and best practice cases have been published on supply chain management. However, globalization has created dispersed supply chains which are vulnerable and dependent on entities and factors that are exogenous to the supply chain. Resource scarcity, environmental regulations, government policies, political unrest, economic instability, and natural disasters are a few examples of how non-supply chain factors influence the way supply chains are managed. These exogenous factors are not just risk sources but can also be venues for innovation and growth. This book presents the notion of supply chain ecosystem to holistically model all the factors that interact with the supply chain and influence the flow of goods, information, and finance. Through a number of real-life case studies, the authors use the ecosystem framework to study the governance, risk, innovation, and performance issues in supply chain management, and also to redesign the management techniques for global supply chains. In doing so, this book makes a unique contribution to the theory and practice of supply chain networks. Contents: Ecosystem Framework: Introduction The Supply Chain Ecosystem Framework Performance Analysis Supply Chain Risk Innovation Governance, Coordination, and Control Global Supply Chain Redesign Applications: Location Analysis Green Supply Chains Smart Villages and Cities Epilogue Readership: Academics, researchers, and undergraduate and graduate students in courses on supply chain engineering and operations management; managers wishing to gain insights into global supply chain network issues. Key Features: Presents a new framework ia the Supply Chain Ecosystem ia for redesign of global supply chain networks with emphasis on governance, risk, innovation, and performance, thereby filling a gap in the literature Illustrates the generality and practicality of the ecosystem framework through various applications, e.g., location analysis, green supply chain design, and smart villages and cities Both authors are well-respected academics, with high industry orientation. Their experience and insights into the logistics and supply chain fields in the Asia-Pacific region are reflected in the book

Orchestrating a network of activities in the value chain

The orchestrator is a management literature metaphor to describe the role of a player who organizes and manages a set of activities in a network, by ensuring valuecreation opportunities in the system and value appropriation mechanisms for each player. In this paper, we consider orchestrators who do not own capacities but have access to a large pool of globally dispersed service providers in the various stages of the supply chain. For a given customer order, the orchestrator identifies the right set of service providers and coordinates the entire execution such that order is delivered as per the requirements. We propose a mixed integer program to optimally choose the service providers taking into account the capacities, production and distribution costs, international taxation, tariffs, and coordination costs.

Optimal buying from online retailers offering total value discounts

Discounts based on the total value of purchase is a common business practice among the online retailers. The discounts offered could be in the form of rebates, cash backs, gift vouchers, or reward points. The comparison shopping bots provide only price information for individual products but do not consider the total value discounts that could be accrued by buying more products from the same retailer. In this paper, we consider a buyer interested in buying M different items from N retailers who offer total value discounts. The buyer is faced with an optimization problem of choosing the retailers and the items to buy from them to minimize the total buying cost taking into account the total value discounts offered by the retailers. We propose an integer programming formulation for the problem, which can be integrated with the current comparison shopping search engines. As this problem needs to be solved online, we propose a linear programming based heuristic to obtain a nearoptimal solution that could be used with the commercial solvers to accelerate the solution time.

Procurement of global logistics services using combinatorial auctions

Global logistics flows have increased dramatically in recent years due to the globalization in the world economy. It is more complex than the domestic logistics, consisting of multiple services like multi-modal transportation, cross-docking, storage, and customs clearance. Two issues are in order with multitude of services spanning across international borders: First, a single logistics provider may not be able to provide all the services and second, performance non-conformance with any of the services will affect the entire flow. We address the above issues in this paper by proposing a procurement that allows combinatorial bidding with quality of service measures as business constraints.

Outcome aware ranking in value creation networks

In this paper, we consider a natural ranking problem that arises in settings in which a community of people (or agents) are engaged in regular interactions with an end goal of creating value. Examples of such scenarios are academic collaboration networks, creative collaborations, and interactions between agents of a service delivery organization. For instance, consider a service delivery organization which essentially resolves a sequence of service requests from its customers by deploying its agents to resolve the requests. Typically, resolving a request requires interaction between multiple agents and results in an outcome (or value). The outcome could be success or failure of problem resolution or an index of customer satisfaction. For this scenario, the ranking of the agents of the network should take into account two aspects: importance of the agents in the network structure that arises as a result of interactions and the value generated by the interactions involving the respective agents. Such a ranking can be used for several purposes such as identifying influential agents of the interaction network, effective and efficient spreading of messages in the network. In this paper, we formally model the above ranking problem and develop a novel algorithm for computing the ranking. The key aspect of our approach is creating special nodes in the interaction network corresponding to the outcomes and endowing them independent, external status. The algorithm then iteratively spreads the external status of the outcomes to the agents based on their interactions and the outcome of those interactions. This results in an eigenvector like formulation, which results in a method requiring computing the inverse of a matrix rather than the eigenvector. We present several theoretical characterizations of our algorithmic approach. We present experimental results on the public domain real-life datasets from the Internet Movie Database and a dataset constructed by retrieving impact and citation ratings for papers listed in the DBLP database.