Koltai – QSMS Research Group

Koltai’s paper published in The Int. J. Manag. Educ.

The paper titled “Performance evaluation of teams in business simulation games with weight restricted data envelopment analysis models.” (joint with Tamás, A.) has been published in The International Journal of Management Education.

Business simulation games are widely used in higher education, management training, and executive management development programmes. The evaluation of the performance of participants is generally subjective and is based on the trainer’s perception of the importance of several evaluation criteria. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed for such evaluation. Input-oriented constant return-to-scale DEA models are used for evaluating the performance of teams participating in business simulation games (BSG). A car engine manufacturing game played by MBA master students is used to illustrate the proposed method. Weight restrictions are applied to obtain efficiency scores which can be used as an alternative to financial measures. The relationship between the efficiency measure and the financial measure is statistically analyzed. The main conclusion of the presented research is that if weight restriction parameters are properly set, DEA results can provide reliable and detailed information about participants’ performance, about the shortcomings of decisions made during the games, and about possible ways to improve performance.

The paper presents the first application of DEA in the area of performance evaluation in BSG, consequently it can be considered a significant extension of the DEA application domain.

_{Koltai, T. and Tamás, A. (2022). Performance evaluation of teams in business simulation games with weight restricted data envelopment analysis models. The International Journal of Management Education, Volume 20, Issue 3, p. 17.}

_{https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2022.100688}

Koltai’s paper in the Int J Production Econ

The paper titled “An analysis of task assignment and cycle times when robots are added to human-operated assembly lines, using mathematical programming models” (joint with Dimény, I; Gallina, V; Gaal, A; and Sepe, C) has recently been published in the International Journal of Production Economics.

Assembly lines are flow-oriented production systems made up by a sequence of workstations arranged along a conveyor belt. In the “progressive assembly” manufacturing process, parts flow from station to station and components are gradually assembled together to obtain the final product. The assignment of tasks to the workstations is solved by assembly line balancing (ALB) problems. At each statin a worker is performing the assigned tasks. ALB problems can be formulated as by mixed integer linear mathematical programming models (MILP).

An extension to the classical ALP problems is when the different skills of workers are considered at task assignment. In this paper the possibility of the application of robots at the different stations is investigated. Robots are considered as workers with special skills, and the collaboration possibility of a robot and a worker at stations are also considered.

When workers and robots may collaborate at stations task assignment problem must be completed with the scheduling of task as well. This way the applied mathematical problem will be non-linear. The presented paper shows, how this type of models can be linearized or solved with constraint programming. The results may assist managers to find a proper assembly line configuration when workers as well as robots are used at the line.

_{Koltai, T; Dimény, I; Gallina, V; Gaal, A; Sepe, C: An analysis of task assignment and cycle times when robots are added to human-operated assembly lines, using mathematical programming models, International Journal of Production Economics, Volume 242, December 2021 (In-press). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2021.108292}

Kóczy & Somogyi at the Conference on Economic Design

László Á. Kóczy will present “Apportionment methods in resource allocation”, a joint work with QSMS-member Tamás Koltai, Balázs R. Sziklai and Alexandra Tamás. Róbert Somogyi will present his paper “Bertrand-Edgeworth Competition with Capacity Uncertainty” coauthored with Wouter Vergote (Columbia University).

The Conference on Economic Design is the biannual conference of the Society for Economic Design and is organised in alternated years with the conference of the Society of Social Choice and Welfare. This year the conference is organised in Budapest by Péter Biró (OC Chair) and Lars Ehlers (PC Chair).

The Keynote Speakers are:

Leonid-Hurwicz Lecture: Philippe Jehiel (Paris School of Economics)
Murat Sertel Lecture: Bhaskar Dutta (University of Warwick)
Paul Kleindorfer Lecture: Bumin Yenmez (Boston College)