Acceptable Deadline Research Articles

Ultimatum Deadlines

An important characteristic of any offer is the deadline at which it expires. We consider an ultimatum deadline game in which the proposer's decision variable is the offer deadline, while the responder faces a standard finite-horizon search problem. We show that the responder's strategy is characterized by a shortest acceptable deadline: at the time of deadline, he accepts an offer if the deadline is longer than his shortest acceptable deadline, and rejects it otherwise. If the proposer has all information available to the responder, the optimal deadline is the responder's shortest acceptable deadline. If the proposer is uncertain about the responder's situation, the optimal deadline gets longer, unless this uncertainty is very large. After normative analysis of the deadline setting problem, we present results from a behavioral study of the game. The average shortest acceptable deadline set by the responders equals the one that would maximize the expected value, whereas the proposers tend to set deadlines that are too short. The prescriptive conclusion for a proposer, emerging from the model and the experiment, is that in case of uncertainty it is better to set a deadline longer than what would be optimal if uncertainty were ignored.

Enhancing R&D in science-based industry: An optimal stopping model for drug discovery

Drug discovery is a process of science work full of exploration and complexity. Drug researchers face the dilemma of either working ‘forever’ to create a perfect drug or delivering a workable drug within an acceptable deadline to both save lives and make a profit. Specifically, in the compound screening and optimization stage, drug researchers must decide whether or not to stop the research and deliver the result for clinical testing. This paper proposes a model of optimal stopping time to help drug researchers make such decisions. It examines the decision strategies drug researchers should take through maximizing their objective function. The numerical examples given here show that this model is widely applicable. The model offers potential merits in terms of its ability to clarify drug researchers’ decision-making practices and helping managers maneuver through the jungle of science work.

Study of the thermal behaviour of a production unit of concrete structural components

We propose an economic and technical optimisation of a small concrete structures workshop. The heat released by the chemical hydration reaction is modeled and validated with experimental data. A nodal model of the thermal response of the incubator internal air, using an electrical analogy approach, is realised. The equivalent time is calculated and a battery of air treatment units is sized to reach the mechanical resistance for handling in an acceptable deadline whatever the meteorological conditions are.The solution minimizing energy costs by studying the influence of inherent parameters of the system and step regimes of the workshop has been conducted.