ISyE Colloquia Series

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UW-ISyE looks forward to welcoming Professor Huseyin Topaloglu from Cornell University.

Dynamic Assortment Optimization via Fluid Approximations Using De-Randomized Policies

We consider using fluid approximations to construct approximate policies for dynamic assortment optimization problems. Approximate policies constructed in this fashion often turn out to be sampling-based and inventory-agnostic. In particular, such policies are sampling-based, as they sample an assortment of products to offer from a fixed distribution. Such policies are inventory-agnostic, as the sampled assortments may include out-of-stock products, so if a customer chooses an out-of-stock product from the offered assortment, then she must leave without a purchase. Sampling-based inventory-agnostic policies are practically undesirable. In this talk, we begin by discussing performance guarantees for sampling-based inventory-agnostic policies. To address the fact that these policies are practically undesirable, we show that we can de-randomize any sampling-based inventory-agnostic policy, so that the de-randomized policy offers a deterministic sequence of assortments. Moreover, we show that we can implement any inventory-agnostic policy that offers a deterministic sequence of assortments in way that it never offers out-of-stock products. In this way, we convert a sampling-based inventory-agnostic policy into one that uses a deterministic sequence of assortments without offering any out-of-stock products. Our results make the approximate policies from fluid approximations practically viable while preserving their performance guarantees.

Bio : Huseyin Topaloglu is the Howard and Eleanor Morgan Professor in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell Tech. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton. His recent work focuses on constructing tractable solution methods for large-scale network revenue management and building approximation strategies for retail assortment planning. Huseyin Topaloglu is currently serving as the Associate Dean for Education at Cornell Tech and as an Area Editor for Analytics in Operations area at Manufacturing and Service Operations Management.

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