{"70879":{"#nid":"70879","#data":{"type":"event","title":"A Stochastic optimal control problem in workforce management","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETITLE: A Stochastic optimal control problem in workforce management\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESPEAKER: Xuefeng Gao\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EABSTRACT:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAn important problem in workforce management involves determining a company\u0027s staffing portfolio from a mix of different sources. We consider\nthe special case of determining a company\u0027s positions in its internal and\nexternal workforce given the uncertainty and volatility of growing\/emerging\ndemand, and the risks associated with these positions. To solve this\nproblem, we take a risk hedging approach and formulate a stochastic optimal\ncontrol problem for maximizing the expected discounted profit over an\ninfinite horizon. Our main results include deriving the optimal workforce\nmanagement policy and establishing that it is of base stock type (2-sided).\nNumerical experiments have been conducted to provide insights and\nunderstand the optimal policy. Both our theoretical results and numerical\nexperiments demonstrate that dynamic alignment of workforce in response to\nchanging\/volatile demand is critical.  This is joint work with Yingdong Lu,\nMayank Sharma and Mark Squillante at IBM Research.\n\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBio:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EXuefeng Gao is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. His advisors are Professor Jim\nDai and Professor Ton Dieker.  He received B.S. in Mathematics from Peking University, Beijing in 2008. He is interested in Applied Probability and\nStochastic Processes, Stochastic Optimization and Market Microstructure.\n\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"A Stochastic optimal control problem in workforce management"}],"uid":"27187","created_gmt":"2011-10-04 15:23:41","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 01:56:15","author":"Anita Race","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2011-10-07T14:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2011-10-07T15:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2011-10-07T15:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2011-10-07 18:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2011-10-07 19:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2011-10-07 19:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}