Speaker: Refik Güllü (Boğaziçi University, Department of Industrial Engineering)
Title: Analysis of a Fork-join Queue: Strategic Customers and Benefits of Information
Date: April 26, 2024 (Friday)
Time: 13:30 – 14:30
Place: EA-409
Abstract: In this talk we consider a fork-join queue with strategic customers: customers arrive at the system as a pair and each of which is directed to one of the parallel servers if they decide to join the system. After completion of the service, the pair couples again and leaves the system together. Fork-join queues can be used to model a variety of systems: meal-delivery service, healthcare, project management, data processing, and manufacturing. Strategic pairs, upon arriving, make joining or balking decisions using the information provided to them. In this talk we consider three layers of information availability: full queue length information, partial information and no information. The level of information provided to customers has a significant effect on their joining decision and therefore it impacts important system performance. We examine and derive expressions for the average utility of customers, the fraction of customers joining the system and the average waiting time of a customer under different levels of information. Through numerical experiments we present insight regarding who (customers or the service provider) benefits from better information.
Bio: Dr. Refik Güllü is a Professor of Industrial Engineering at Boğaziçi University. Prior to joining Boğaziçi IE in 2005, he was a faculty member at Middle East Technical University (METU) IE Department. Refik Güllü obtained B.S. and M.S. degrees from METU IE Department, and M.S. and PhD. degrees from Cornell University, School of ORIE. Dr. Güllü’s research is mainly focused on applied stochastic modeling. He published papers on stochastic modeling of manufacturing, inventory, service, finance, healthcare, disease-spread, and telecommunication systems. He served as the chair of IE Department at Boğaziçi University, chair of Financial Engineering Program at Boğaziçi University, and chair of the Mathematical Modeling Section of International Society for Inventory Research. He was the president of OR Society of Turkey (YAD) from 2005 to 2009. He currently serves as the Stochastic Models Department Editor for OR Spectrum and as an Associate Editor for Naval Research Logistics.