Organization and Production

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aicia tecnologia partner tecnologico andalucia spain

Industrial and Services Systems

aicia tecnologia partner tecnologico andalucia spain

The development of management, optimization and simulation technologies has allowed industrial and services systems to function efficiently. These optimization technologies are used parallel to simulation techniques that allow for anticipating and simulating the performance of systems prior to their implementation.


investigación andalucía
231


Declared and Revealed Preference Models

Design and exploitation of declared and revealed preference models that allow actual and potential users of any product or service of a firm to be evaluated. With this technique, value can be added to a user data base with which efficiency could be improved, complemented by client profiles.

To carry out distributed collection of data, questionnaires are first designed which take into account the estimation models later used and the possible existence of interactions between the explanatory factors of customer satisfaction. To this end, various search heuristic based algorithms are used. AICIA is a pioneer in the use of this type of survey with such characteristics.

In the analysis of answers and the quantification of the factors decisive to the satisfaction of product and/or service, discrete choice models are used (logit, hierarchical logit, mixed logit, etc.) that attenuate the limitations implicit in lineal regression based preference estimation models.


investigación andalucía
232


Revenue Management in Service Firms

Revenue Management is an increasingly important technique in the service sector, due to the fact that the majority of firms involved present simultaneousness in the production and consumption of the service given, together with the impossibility of storing a perishable product. The aim is to sell each unit of the inventory to the right type of client at the precise moment and at suitable price. Along these lines, firms from the hotel sector, car hire and parking, etc. are analyzed.

The development of management tools that support firm managers in decision making and allow them to evaluate whether it is better to sell a service to the first possible client or wait till nearer to the provision of the service, for the arrival of clients willing to pay out greater amounts. In this way the behaviour of clients and possible improvements in the services provided can be predicted.