Providing Less to Achieve More – A Operations Perspective for Not-for-Profit Organizations

Information Systems and Operations Management

Speaker: Atalay Atasu (INSEAD)

Salle Bernard Ramanantsoa

Abstract: 

Not-for-profit organizations deal with non-traditional constraints that require atypical solutions to operational challenges. In this talk, I will share two recent projects to illustrate some of these challenges. The first project (joint work with Zhang, Ayer and Toktay) involves a medical surplus recovery organization, which tries to match ample medical device demand (from beneficiary hospitals in the developing world) and tight supply constraints (donations from hospitals in the developed world). The solution to the supply and demand mismatch problem in this context involves limiting supply information provision to recipients to maximize value provision. The second project (joint work with Zhang and Ramachandran) involves an architecture firm designing houses for disaster struck communities. The supply (houses built) and demand (beneficiaries provided with a house) mismatch in this example is overcome by providing the beneficiaries in these communities with partially complete houses, even in the absence of budget limitations. The main take-away from these two projects regards how operations research impact in the not-for-profit sector could involve non-traditional solution approaches.