תחומי מחקר-סגל

 

Prof. Arik Sadeh, Ph.D. Texas A&M University,  Sadeh@hit.ac.il

 

Scheduling: Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) under non-delay scheduling. Optimal allocation of resources among activities is an important question in economics and management. (Finding the Shortest Non-Delay Schedule for a Resource-Constrained Project. Int'l. J. of Operations Research and Information Systems, 3(4), 2012 (41-58) (with Cohen and Zwikael))

 

Product Life and Strategy: Research is about strategic type managerial decisions of when a firm should initiate a product cycle and when to terminate it. In developing the model I relay on the economic theory about optimal allocation of time as a resource. Short run (tactical) and long run (strategic) aspects of product lifecycle over many years are taken in consideration. The impact of technology and the willingness of consumers for new products are considered as well. The objective criterion is maximizing average cash flow. (Optimal Product Lifecycle and Partial Information with Active Learning Computational Economics, 21, 2003 (125-136))

 

Critical Success Factors: The focus of this study is the importance of organizational support provided to project managers. It is of specific interest to discuss which organizational support factors affect what success dimensions. The projects are categorized according to four scales: novelty, complexity, level of technological uncertainty and the pace of the project (Project Manager-Project (PM-P) Fit and Project Success International Journal of Operations and Production Management (IJOPM) 29(3), 2009 (268-291)). There is an ongoing joined research that focuses on the factors affecting high level decision makers when they decide whether or not to conduct a project. considering long term outcomes and short term outputs

 

Risk Management: The role of uncertainty at the early stages of project on the success of projects is the main issue to be analyzed. The research deals with managerial and organizational support factors being used in organizations in order to achieve better success. A statistical methodology is used to reveal how project managers confront risk and uncertainty. (Planning Effort as an Effective Risk Management Tool. Journal of Operations Management, 25, 2007 (755-767))

 


 

Dr. Eyal Brill, Ph.D. Hebrew University, eyalb@hit.ac.il

 

Abnormality detection in industrial systems: Abnormality detection is based on unsupervised learning algorithms. The research focus on methods for detecting abnormality in industrial systems which are characterized by large amount of data generated on time based and collected from sensors which are vulnerable to noisy and non-trusted data sources. Application of the above is demonstrated in the following publication: Implementing Machine Learning Algorithms for Water Quality Events Detection Theory and Practice.
International Practices for Protecting Water and Wastewater Infrastructure to be edited by: Robert M. Clark and Simon Hakim. Additional paper which is under construction is titled as: "Brownian Motion Based Abnormality Detection: The time domain".

 

Heuristics methods for water engineering systems: Applying heuristics methods for solving engineering problems in water systems. This includes the following topics:
  • "Optimal Location of Quality Sensors in a Water Distribution System: A Heuristic Approach"
    Technical paper that has been submitted for publication this quarter.
  • "Contamination source location without hydraulic model". Currently under research

 


Dr. David Raz, Ph.D. Tel-Aviv University,  davidra@hit.ac.il

 

Queueing: Fairness, predictability and other second degree measures in queueing, trying to find measures that capture both the issue of seniority and the issue of size. Using Fuzzy Control ideas in queueing with the idea that policies based on fuzzy control may be able to capture more fuzzy concepts such as fairness yet be efficient enough. Performance of queueing regimes and policies under inexact and missing information e.g. the performance of the Shortest Queue or Smallest Workload policies when queue lengths are unknown or inexact, the performance of "Shortest Customer" policy when customer sizes are inexact or missing. (B. Avi-Itzhak, H. Levy, D. Raz, "A resource allocation queueing fairness measure: Properties and bounds", Queueing Systems, 56, 2007 (65-71))

 

Logistics: Novel ideas for optimizing specific packing problems, specifically a pseudo-efficient frontier method for solving two-phase packing problems. Practical uses of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) e.g. convoy routing, routing with outsourcing and optional customers. (D. Raz, A. Sadeh, "A pseudo-efficient frontier method for solving two-phase packing problems", Proc. Int'l. Conf. on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM2001), Singapore, 6-9 December 2011 (181-184))

 

Ad-hoc Networks: Studying the performance of on-demand routing algorithms in ad-hoc networks over time, the idea being to propose an optimal protocol for tasks which have a connectivity requirement and a time horizon, as opposed to current trends which ignore these. Studying the effect of the terrain type on the performance of such protocols, with the expectation that some protocols will be more efficient on rural terrains as opposed to urban terrains. (D. Raz and S. Levy, "A Study of the Connectivity Over Time Behavior of On-Demand Ad Hoc Path Selection Schemes", to be published)

 


Dr. Irena Milstein, Ph.D. Tel-Aviv University, irenam@hit.ac.il

 

Electricity markets: A series of papers on the optimal capacity mix in the competitive electricity market. They examine the effects of the number of generation technologies, the renewable vs. fossil technologies, different market structures and CO2 taxes on the industry's optimal capacity, capacity mix and profits, consumer surplus and social welfare. (The inevitability of capacity underinvestment in competitive electricity markets, Energy Economics, 34, 2012 (62-77) (with Tishler); Intermittently renewable energy, optimal capacity mix and prices in a deregulated electricity market, Energy Policy, 39, 2011 (3922-3927) (with Tishler); Capacity commitment and price volatility in a competitive electricity market, Energy Economics, 30, 2008 (1625-1647) (with Tishler and Woo))

 

R&D and Product Market Competition: Research predicts a U-shaped relationship between competition intensity and innovation in oligopoly markets, resulting from the impact of two opposing effects on the industry's R&D efforts. Another research examines the effect of product compatibility on firms' incentives to invest in innovation to improve the quality of differentiated products in markets characterized by network externalities. (R&D wars and the effects of innovation on the success and survivability of firms in oligopoly markets, Int'l. J. of Industrial Organization, 27, 2009 (519-531) (with Tishler))

 

RFP and Proposal analysis: Request for Proposals (RFP) and proposal analysis are significant milestones in Information Technology (IT) projects, regardless of the management and development approaches that are implemented. The study proposes a new method for objective multi-alternative proposal analysis, enabling the evaluation of multi-alternative proposals and the rankings of the suppliers. (Supplier ranking by multi-alternative proposal analysis for agile projects, Int'l. J. of Project Management, 30 (6), 2012 (723-730) (with Ben-David and Gelbard))

 

Definition of the Productivity of ICT: The goals of this research are conducting a comprehensive literature survey of the existing definition and attributes of ICT Productivity, creating a data depository on ICT and Productivity, analyze the findings and identify the missing concepts in the traditional definition of ICT Productivity, and generating revised theoretical concepts, models and a framework that will serve as a foundation for the conduct of empirical research. (Research grant of the Institute for Information, Innovation and Productivity (IIIP), USA)

 


 

Dr. Gil Greenstein, Ph.D. - Tel Aviv University, gilgr@hit.ac.il

 

The Productivity Paradox of ICT: The research centers on the relationship between the information system's time and content characteristics and the value of the information. It suggests a method to model the utility considerations that lead to the choice of an information system. The entailed models are employed to illuminate certain facets of the productivity paradox. The results of the analysis indicate that there is a direct relationship between systems accessibility and its informativeness. Consequently, there are some aspects of the "Productivity Paradox" that may be explained by using these results. The article proves a number of theorems and discusses the theoretical and practical interpretation of the results. (The impact of accessibility on the value of information and the productivity paradox European Journal of Operational Research, 161, 2005 (505-524), with N. Ahituv). This research can be expanded into further directions of research.

 

Decision Analysis of implementation of ICT: The research suggests a new normative model that attempts to analyze why improvement of versions of existing decision support systems do not necessarily increase the effectiveness and the productivity of decision making processes. Moreover, this research suggests some constructive ideas, formulated through a normative analytic model, how to select a strategy for the design and switching to a new version of a decision support system (DSS), without having to immediately run through a mega conversion and training process while temporarily losing productivity. Furthermore, this approach explains normatively the phenomenon of "leaks of productivity”, namely, the decrease in productivity of information systems, after they have been upgraded or replaced with new ones. (Evolution or revolution of organizational information technology – Modeling decision makers' perspective, J. of Service Science and Management, 3(1), 2010 (51-66), with N. Ahituv). This is an ongoing research that can be expanded into further directions of research.

 

Productivity of ICT: More than 20 years have passed since Robert Solow (1989) used the term "productivity paradox" of IT. About 9 years later, Brynlolfsson and Hitt (1998) identified that we are in the very early stages of an information revolution, whose effects are still unclear to the human community. Now, from a more mature perspective, we try to demonstrate some of the aspects that will affect productivity of ICT in the forthcoming years. DEPICT (Definition of the Productivity of ICT) is a research project aimed to "refresh” the approach to ICT Productivity. The goals of DEPICT are: Conducting a comprehensive literature survey of the existing definition and attributes of ICT Productivity. Create a data depository on ICT and Productivity. Analyze the findings and identify the missing concepts in the traditional definition of ICT Productivity. Generate revised theoretical concepts, models and a framework that will serve as a foundation for the conduct of empirical research. (Reviewing and Renewing the Definition of the Productivity of ICT in the Era of Cyberspace, Internet, Open Information and Shared Knowledge ,A Sponsored research by Institute for Information, Innovation and Productivity (IIIP), USA, 2009-2012, With N. Ahituv, E.A. Stohr, I. Milstein, A.Z. Balasiano, H. Jin ). This is an ongoing research.