Analysis and optimization of recruitment stocking problems
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Analysis and optimization of recruitment stocking problems Anh Ninh1
· Benjamin Melamed2 · Yao Zhao2
Accepted: 1 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract We study a new class of inventory control problems, the recruitment stocking problem (RSP), applicable to general recruitment systems and products with limited supplies. Recruitment stocking occurs routinely in many organizations with the goal of identifying qualified candidates rapidly and cost effectively. This activity may take place at multiple sites simultaneously to shorten the recruitment time. Examples include recruiting patients in clinical trials, enlisting personnel in the military, and recruiting customers for product sampling in market testing and promotion. RSP differs from the extant inventory management literature in that it stipulates a finite recruitment target, so that recruitment is terminated as soon as the total number of recruits across all locations reaches that prescribed target. This distinctive feature of RSP calls for the development of new stochastic models to evaluate and optimize system performance. Thus, we present a novel methodology of relaxation and decomposition to characterize the probability distribution of rejections in RSP (number of arrivals to an empty inventory). This method provides a basis for efficient and accurate evaluation of the Type 2 service level and expected recruitment time. We also leverage the attendant computational efficiency to develop optimization algorithms to compute the optimal stocking quantities. Keywords Inventory control · Recruitment · Clinical trials · Stochastic · Allocation
1 Introduction Recruitment occurs routinely in many organizations with the goal of identifying qualified candidates rapidly and cost effectively. This activity may take place at multiple sites simultaneously to shorten recruitment time. Examples include recruiting patients in clinical trials, enlisting personnel in the military, and recruiting customers for product sampling in market testing and promotion. Recruitment is frequently required to supply new recruits with materials in the form of drugs, equipment, product samples, etc. Shortage of such materials can result in lost recruits, but excessive inventory is costly and wasteful. Thus, appropriate inventory sizing at the recruitment sites supports the timeliness and cost effectiveness of recruitment.
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Anh Ninh [email protected]
1
Department of Mathematics, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA
2
Department of Supply Chain Management, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
123
Annals of Operations Research
Clinical trials are a case in point. Clinical trials, as mandated by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test the safety and efficacy of investigational drugs in human subjects, typically recruit patients at multiple sites simultaneously (Rowland 2003; Thiers et al. 2008; Glickman et al. 2009). To ensure the statistical significance of the clinical hypotheses, a sample size (target num
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