Melvyn Sim Assigning products to and retrieving them from proper storage locations in a unit-load warehouse are crucial in minimizing its operating cost. The problem becomes intractable when the warehouse faces uncertain demand in a dynamic setting. We assume a factor-based demand model in which demand for each product in each period is affinely dependent on some … Read more
The traditional decision-making framework for newsvendor models is to assume a distribution of the underlying demand. However, the resulting optimal policy is typically sensitive to the choice of the distribution. A more conservative approach is to assume that the distribution belongs to a set parameterized by a few known moments. An ambiguity-averse newsvendor would choose … Read more
Expected utility models in portfolio optimization is based on the assumption of complete knowledge of the distribution of random returns. In this paper, we relax this assumption to the knowledge of only the mean, covariance and support information. No additional assumption on the type of distribution such as normality is made. The investor’s utility is … Read more
In this work we introduce a class of measures for evaluating the quality of financial positions based on their ability to achieve desired financial goals. In the spirit of Simon (1959), we call these measures satisficing measures and show that they are dual to classes of risk measures. This approach has the advantage that aspiration … Read more
We propose tractable replenishment policies for a multi-period, single product inventory control problem under ambiguous demands, that is, only limited information of the demand distributions such as mean, support and deviation measures are available. We obtain the parameters of the tractable replenishment policies by solving a deterministic optimization problem in the form of second order … Read more
This paper proposes a control parametrization under Model Predictive Controller (MPC) framework for constrained linear discrete time systems with bounded additive disturbances. The proposed approach has the same feasible domain as that obtained from parametrization over the family of time-varying state feedback policies. In addition, the closed-loop system is stable in the sense that the … Read more
In this paper we review the different tractable approximations of individual chance constraint problems using robust optimization on a varieties of uncertainty set, and show their interesting connections with bounds on the condition-value-at-risk CVaR measure popularized by Rockafellar and Uryasev. We also propose a new formulation for approximating joint chance constrained problems that improves upon … Read more
Achieving a targeted objective, goal or aspiration level are relevant aspects of decision making under uncertainties. We develop a goal driven stochastic optimization model that takes into account an aspiration level. Our model maximizes the shortfall aspiration level criterion}, which encompasses the probability of success in achieving the goal and an expected level of under-performance … Read more
Stochastic programming, despite its immense modeling capabilities, is well known to be computationally excruciating. In this paper, we introduce a unified framework of approximating multiperiod stochastic programming from the perspective of robust optimization. Specifically, we propose a framework that integrates multistage modeling with safeguarding constraints. The framework is computationally tractable in the form of second … Read more
This paper studies a distribution system consisting of multiple retail locations with transshipment operations among the retailers. Due to the difficulty in computing the optimal solution imposed by the transshipment operations and in estimating shortage cost from a practical perspective, we propose a robust optimization framework for analyzing the impact of transshipment operations on such … Read more