A Cooperative Savings Game Approach to a Time Sensitive Capacity Allocation and Scheduling Problem

Decision Sciences 44(2) pp. 357-376. Article first published online: 12 APR 2013. DOI: 10.1111/deci.12013

31 Pages Posted: 20 Sep 2014 Last revised: 26 Sep 2014

See all articles by Tolga Aydinliyim

Tolga Aydinliyim

Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY

George Vairaktarakis

Case Western Reserve University

Date Written: June 30, 2013

Abstract

We consider a competitive scheduling setting with arbitrary number of agents each having the option to utilize two parallel resources to satisfy its demand: (i) an in-house resource dedicated to process only the tasks of each specific agent, and (ii) a flexible resource capable of processing all agents' workloads. In a non-cooperative setting, each agent would determine how much of its demand it will subcontract to the flexible resource with the objective to deliver its entire demand as quickly as possible subject to the priority rules set by the owner of the flexible resource (i.e., third-party). In this study, we also allow for agents to coalesce with other agents and update their initial subcontracting decisions to attain rescheduling savings. Evidently, a grand coalition of all agents can coordinate to achieve the maximum savings possible, but the resulting schedule may yield individual losses for a subset of agents (which we refer to as “losers”), thus necessitating a transfer payment scheme to distribute the rescheduling savings among the agents in an equitable way. We model the rescheduling interactions among the agents as a cooperative savings game, and propose savings distribution schemes that invoke the core allocation concept.

Keywords: Cooperative Game Theory, Scheduling, Subcontracting.

Suggested Citation

Aydinliyim, Tolga and Vairaktarakis, George, A Cooperative Savings Game Approach to a Time Sensitive Capacity Allocation and Scheduling Problem (June 30, 2013). Decision Sciences 44(2) pp. 357-376. Article first published online: 12 APR 2013. DOI: 10.1111/deci.12013 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2498131

Tolga Aydinliyim (Contact Author)

Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY ( email )

55 Lexington Ave
New York, NY 10010
United States

George Vairaktarakis

Case Western Reserve University ( email )

10900 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44106
United States

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