Introduction
Nichalin S. Summerfield
• Ph.D. Candidate in Management (Operations
Management), Expected December 2010.
• Dissertation Title: Games of Decentralized Inventory
Management
• Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Moshe Dror
• Minor: Economics
Research Interests:
• Game Theory (Cooperative and Non-cooperative Game)
• Operations Management (Supply chain and inventory
management)
Games of Decentralized Inventory
Management
The 1st chapter: Prelim exam paper
Influential paper:
• Anupindi, R., Y. Bassok, E. Zemel. 2001. “A general framework for
the study of decentralized distribution systems,” Manufacturing
Service Oper. Management 4(3) 349-368.
– Cited: 125 times as of today according to Google Scholar
– This paper proposes a profit sharing mechanism that is fair if all retailers
are rational and play Nash equilibrium strategy.
– Problems: Is there a unique Nash equilibrium? Will retailers always play
Nash?
My prelim exam paper answered these problems.
• Suakkaphong, N. and Dror, M. (2010) “Managing Decentralized
Inventory and Transshipment,” TOP – Journal of the Spanish
Society of Statistics and Operations Research, (in press).
The 2nd chapter: Oral exam paper
• The setting as described in Anupindi et al. (2001) is too restricted. A
minor change in the setting can change the game, the model and
the result.
• Problems: What are the settings that have been studied? Is there a
general framework that can be used?
My oral exam paper addresses these.
• Suakkaphong, N. and Dror, M. (2010) “Stochastic Programming
Framework for Decentralized Inventory with Transshipment,” (In
revision)
Taxonomy of Decentralized Inventory Games with
Transshipment
Prelim exam paper
The 3rd paper
The 3rd chapter: In progress
• Suakkaphong, N. and Dror, M. (2010)
“Biform Game: Reflection as a Stochastic
Programming Problem,” (in progress)
– Expands beyond decentralized inventory
games
– Based on another influential paper
• Brandenburger, A., H. W. Stuart Jr. 2007. “Biform
games,” Management Science 53(4) 537-549.
Q&A
• Developing each work
– Discuss with my advisor to get an idea
– Read a lot of papers
– Pose a lot of questions and try to answer them myself
• Most required mathematical modeling and numerical examples.
– Write them down
• What resources did you need and how did you get
them?
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Books from library
Journal papers from Google Scholar (MS, OR, MSOM, etc.)
Software: Latex
Talk to experts: Dr. Moshe Dror (MIS), Dr. Guzin Bayraksan
(SIE), and Dr. Rabah Amir (Economics)
– $$$ for attending conferences from GPSC