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Flexibility in curriculum, in all its academic programs, encompassing elements of teaching, research, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship is the most unique feature of IIT Jodhpur. The Department of Science and Technology (DST), under the National Mission on Cyber Physical Systems, has identified IIT Jodhpur as a Technology &amp; Innovation Hub in the area of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. The institute has also been nominated as the coordinator for the Jodhpur City and Knowledge Cluster by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India.

The sprawling 852-acre IIT Jodhpur campus is a majestic tribute to the deep-rooted diverse cultural heritage of the region. The campus is an architectural masterpiece, which is slated to become an international exemplar of sustainability with net-zero energy, and advanced water and waste management strategies.&rdquo;

IIT Jodhpur

With the advent of COVID-19, urban transportation has been severely disrupted. We develop a stylized analytical model to study the effect of COVID-19 on the optimal pricing and hygiene level decisions of e-hailing taxi services, which play a crucial role in urban transportation. We analyze whether autonomous vehicles can aid the e-hailing taxi firms to sustain operations during these troubled times. In particular, we provide conditions under which the e-hailing taxi firms should collaborate with an original equipment manufacturer to introduce autonomous vehicles for urban transportation. Owing to the high fixed cost associated with acquiring autonomous vehicles, the e-hailing taxi firms intend to collaborate with an original equipment manufacturer. If the e-hailing taxi firm obtains a significant share from each ride in its collaboration, the hygiene level with autonomous vehicles is always greater than the hygiene level without autonomous vehicles, which is vital during the pandemic. With respect to the question of whether the e-hailing taxi firm should collaborate with the original equipment manufacturer to introduce autonomous vehicles from consumers’ viewpoint, we surprisingly find that the consumers are better off when the autonomous vehicles are introduced without collaboration both in the short-run and the long-run. However, given the high fixed cost of introducing autonomous vehicles, the e-hailing taxi firm will find it profitable to collaborate with an original equipment manufacturer if and only if its share from each ride is significant enough. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

School of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (AIDE)

World University root node

Annals of Operations Research

Towards sharing economy 2.0 with autonomous vehicles? Modeling the impact of COVID-19 on the e-hailing taxi service industry

The impact of COVID-19 on urban travel behavior has been unprecedented. It has significantly influenced the travel mode choices of different urban commuters in various countries across the globe. Given that the public transport providers need to tradeoff between minimizing the spread of COVID-19 and providing an affordable travel choice in this environment, we develop a strategic queueing model to analyze the effect of different pricing strategies on the commuter behavior. In particular, we consider a Markovian queue in front of a public transport ticket counter wherein strategic commuters arrive at the service facility and make joining or balking decisions based on their derived utilities. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we suggest that the public transport provider needs to decrease the price to filter out the wealthy commuters who possess feasible alternative travel options from using public transport and promote the commuters with no alternatives in using public transport. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Fulltext

Public Transport

To increase or to decrease the price? Managing public transport queues during COVID-19 in the presence of strategic commuters

An analysis of Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Parijoyana, a Government of India scheme which aims to provide quality generic medicines at affordable prices, is performed using a stylized model. There is distrust on the quality of generic medicines provided by the government and the government is taking enough measures to counter this perception. However, this distrust ensures that adverse selection is avoided wherein the poor patients become the scheme's beneficiaries and the wealthy patients don't intend to get generic medicines from this scheme. Hence, it is rational for the government to expend limited effort in creating awareness on the high quality of generic medicines so as to screen the wealthy patients from the poor patients. However, the government should exert maximum effort possible in ensuring the availability of generic medicines so that the search cost is minimized. It is surprisingly found that the government's effort required to screen the wealthy patients from the poor patients decreases with the availability of generic medicines. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Socio-Economic Planning Sciences

Averting adverse selection: The Government of India's scheme to distribute affordable medicines

We consider an M/M/1 high-contact service queue with unknown service rates. Two types of customers, informed and uninformed, making strategic balking decisions, queue at the facility. We find that informed customers follow a threshold strategy and uninformed customers follow a non-threshold strategy in equilibrium. We suggest that the firm should incentivize the fast server such that the quality of service is not compromised. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Operations Research Letters

To incentivize the fast server or not? Firm's dilemma when queue signals service rate in high-contact services

Supply chains in general and last-mile logistics in particular, have been disrupted due to COVID-19. Though several innovative last-mile logistics solutions have been proposed in the past, they possess certain limitations, especially during COVID-19 motivating the need for an alternative last-mile logistics solution. We present a review of literature related to last-mile logistics and supply chain disruptions to identify the limitations of existing last-mile delivery practices during COVID-19. Using a stylized analytical model, we then propose that “mobile warehouse” can be an effective solution to last-mile logistics issues faced during COVID-19 and beyond under certain conditions. A mobile warehouse is a truck dedicated to a particular geographical location and carries the inventory of various products based on the estimated demand requirements for these products in that geographical location. We provide the condition under which the B2C e-commerce providers find it profitable to adopt a truck as a mobile warehouse to sell high demand items quickly. © 2021 The Authors

Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Moving towards “mobile warehouse”: Last-mile logistics during COVID-19 and beyond

In recent times, signalling quality via queues for generic services has received significant attention. However, the literature till date on primary care services has focussed on the optimal speed-quality trade-off to ensure higher service times and lower waiting times for the patients. Borrowing from the queue management literature on generic services, we aim to understand whether the hypothesis that queue is a signal of physician's quality is reasonable. Based on theoretical arguments, we justify the need to investigate this hypothesis on queue acting as a signal of quality in primary care. Although we conjecture that the queue length on arrival may act as a signal of quality, the waiting experienced after joining the queue is still considered expensive. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

International Journal of Health Planning and Management

Using queue to signal quality in primary care: The need for further empirical investigation

We consider an M/ M/ 1 / N¯ observable non-customer-intensive service queueing system with unknown service rates consisting of strategic impatient customers who make balking decisions and non-strategic patient customers who do not make any decision. In the queueing game amongst the impatient customers, we show that there exists at least one pure threshold strategy equilibrium in the presence of patient customers. As multiple pure threshold strategy equilibria exist in certain cases, we consider the minimal pure threshold strategy equilibrium in our sensitivity analysis. We find that the likelihood ratio of a fast server to a slow server in an empty queue is monotonically decreasing in the proportion of impatient customers and monotonically increasing in the waiting area capacity. Further, we find that the minimal pure threshold strategy equilibrium is non-increasing in the proportion of impatient customers and non-decreasing in the waiting area capacity. We also show that at least one pure threshold strategy equilibrium exists when the waiting area capacity is infinite. © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Queueing Systems

Equilibrium in a finite capacity M/M/1 queue with unknown service rates consisting of strategic and non-strategic customers

The spares distribution centre is an important member of a manufacturing supply chain where the automobile components are packaged and distributed to customers and retail units. Though the components do not undergo processing in a spare parts centre, various other operations are performed during distribution that contributes to component failures. The Six Sigma DMAIC framework is used for the analysis of the failures effectively. The different causes of rejections are generated using the cause and effect diagram and each of these causes are validated with the help of experiments and other tools. The root cause of this problem arising in the distribution centre is identified to be the packing method. An economic solution to the existing cause of the problem is implemented with minor variations in the current packing method and the results are discussed. A structured follow up plan for continuous improvement is also suggested. © Copyright 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

International Journal of Services and Operations Management

Failure analysis of automobile spares in a manufacturing supply chain distribution centre using Six Sigma DMAIC framework

Vehicle routing problems (VRPs) whose typical objective is to minimise total travel costs over a tour have evolved over the years with objectives ranging from minimising travel times and distances to minimising pollution and fuel consumption. However, driver behaviour continues to be neglected while planning for vehicle routes. Factors such as traffic congestion levels, monotonous drives and fatigue have an impact on the behaviour of drivers, which in turn might affect their speed-choice and route-choice behaviours. The behaviour of drivers and their subsequent decision-making owing to these factors impact the revenue of transport companies and could lead to huge losses in extreme cases. There have been studies on the behaviour of drivers in isolation, without inclusion of the objectives and constraints of the traditional routing problem. This paper presents a review of existing models of VRP, planner behaviour models in the VRP context and driver behaviour models and provides a motivation to integrate these models in a stochastic traffic environment to produce practical, economic and driver-friendly logistics solutions. The paper provides valuable insights on the relevance of behavioural issues in logistics and highlights the modelling implications of incorporating planner and driver behaviour in the framework of routing problems. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Transport Reviews

Vehicle routing problem and driver behaviour: a review and framework for analysis

As the world moves forward, quality has evolved drastically to meet the growing demands in various organisations. As a result, various quality management procedures have been implemented in varied kinds of organisations. A review of the quality principles such as Total Quality Management, Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma is discussed in order to provide an understanding for implementing quality principles in different organisations, which includes manufacturing, service, healthcare, government, non-profit organisations, transportation and logistics, process industry, etc. With the introduction of quality techniques, the effectiveness of organisations has improved. And these techniques are generic in nature and can improve the efficiency of any organisation. But, the implementation policies in different organisations vary with the type of organisation. The consideration of different organisations provides useful guidelines for the application of these methods in unexplored sectors. Moreover, a brief summary of the key takeaways and extensions for each of these applications in different types of organisations is also presented. The effect of different quality procedures on people and the consideration of environmental concept are proposed to be an area of future research to improve the implementation effectiveness of the quality procedures in the existing areas. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

Total Quality Management and Business Excellence

A review of the quality evolution in various organisations

Feed manufacturing faces enormous challenges and with the demand for good quality feed increasing gradually, it becomes essential to improve the processes in a feed mill. This article provides a brief overview of the different processes in feed manufacturing and identifies the critical process parameters. Five critical parameters are identified where the production rate is the output parameter. Mash feed size, steam temperature, conditioning time and feed rate are the input parameters. Artificial neural network is the methodology which is used to optimize the process parameters. Root mean squared error and coefficient of determination and computation time are used as performance measures and it is observed that Polak-Ribiere conjugate gradient backpropagation training function with log sigmoid - pure linear transfer function combination provided good results among the different available alternatives. The process parameters are then optimized using the appropriate ideal settings of neural network parameters. This model is extremely useful for the prediction of production rate for 1 specific recipe in a feed mill. © 2015 Elsevier B.V..