Secil Savasaneril

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Associate Professor at Middle East Technical University

We study the pricing problem of a seller offering a single item to buyers purchasing multiple units in two periods. Each buyer aims to maximize her total utility over two periods, and is strategic in two dimensions: she may delay the purchase in anticipation of a price discount (at the expense of a reduced utility), and takes other buyers into acco...

In this study, a model is developed for short-term flood control of a complex multi-reservoir system located on one of the largest basins in Turkey. The managing body of the reservoirs requires that short-term real-time flood control is used in conjunction with the long-term operation for energy maximization. For this purpose, a novel operating fra...

We study the pricing problem of a service provider who informs arriving customers about the anticipated delivery times. Besides quoting prices, the provider decides on the amount of delivery time information to be revealed to the customers. Price and delivery time announcement decisions affect the behavior of the customers who are sensitive to pric...

Pumped-storage hydropower is one of the most viable large-scale energy storage options. When managed optimally, pumped-storage hydropower may also bring monetary benefits due to price variations in the electricity market. Two main concerns are the lack of suitable sites and potential environmental impacts, which can be alleviated by using already e...

We study the reservoir management problem in hydropower plants, and propose operating policies to maximize the average annual energy generation or the average annual revenue. Under revenue maximization, our policies allow for short-term electricity price variations to be incorporated into the long-term plan. First, we provide a detailed review of h...

We address the lead time quotation problem of a manufacturer serving multiple customer classes. Customers are sensitive to the quoted lead times and the manufacturer has the flexibility to keep inventory to improve responsiveness. We model the problem as a Markov decision process and characterize the optimal lead time quotation, rationing, and prod...

We study the value of shop floor information for a manufacturer that operates under a make-to-stock queue scheme and quotes lead times to arriving customers. Two settings are analyzed where in the first setting the manufacturer is able to perfectly track the shop floor status, and in the second setting the manufacturer makes decisions under imperfe...

In this work, we study the product substitution decisions of a manufacturer that produces multiple items. We first quantify the cost savings due to flexibility attained through substitution. Ideally, the manufacturer must use the stock level information when giving production, scheduling and substitution decisions. In practice however, such decisio...

In Turkey, municipalities provide a major portion of the city public transportation service. Since the service has to be provided potentially to every resident, and at a low price, municipalities are often left struggling with negative balance. This implies that operating under low cost is essential for survivability. We conduct a study to analyze...

We study the inventory management problem of a service center operating in a decentralized service parts network. The service centers collaborate through inventory and service pooling, and through sharing information on the inventory status. Upon demand arrival, a service center may request a part from the other center, in which case a payment is m...

Intense competition in markets is pushing companies to increase their operational efficiency. One possible way to achieve increased efficiency is through cooperation with other companies. We study the coalition formation among small shippers in a transportation market characterized by uncertain demand. We analyze the decisions taken by the coalitio...

Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) has attracted a lot of attention due to its benefits such as fewer stock-outs, higher sales, and lower inventory levels at the retailers. Vendor-Managed Availability (VMA) is an improvement that exploits the advantages beyond VMI. This article analyzes the benefits beyond information sharing and assesses the motivatio...

We study a dynamic lead-time quotation problem in a base-stock inventory system characterized by lead-time sensitive Poisson demand and exponentially distributed service times. We show that the optimal profit is unimodal in the base-stock level. We compare the base-stock system with a make-to-order (MTO) system and show that the lead-time quotes ar...

In this study, we analyze the distribution decisions of a company operating in the automotive sector. The two subproblems discussed are: (i) how to locate distribution centers that will operate as cross-dock points to minimize the total distribution costs, (ii) to design a decision support system to determine the daily routes and truck-load mixes....

Collaborative procurement emerged as one of the many initiatives for achieving improved inter-firm coordination and collaboration. In this article, we adopt a game-theoretical approach to study the interaction between two firms who procure jointly, but produce independently and remain competitors in a product market characterized by price-sensitive...

We study alternative buyer strategies in markets where procurement costs are effected by economies of scale in the suppliers' production costs and by economies of scope in transportation. We consider buyer strategies with different levels of collaboration, namely, (i) no collaboration among buyers or buyer divisions, (ii) internal collaboration amo...

In this thesis we analyze the procurement process of buyers and supply decisions of manufacturers. Companies are looking for ways to decrease their procurement costs, which account for a large percentage of the supply chain costs. We study the effects of demand aggregation and collaborative procurement on buyers' profitability. First, we make a hig...