ISyE Seminar Series: Prof. Hailong Cui

"Repair or Replace: An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Diagnostic Decisions on Product Returns in a Bike-sharing Platform"

Prof. Hailong Cui

Assistant Professor 
Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

About the seminar:

Bike-sharing has emerged as an effective solution for consumers in recent years. However, the growing consumer adoption of bike-sharing has led to an increase in the susceptibility of shared bikes to frequent damages, resulting in escalated operational costs. Our study focuses on the maintenance practices employed by bike-sharing platforms to address this challenge. We have gathered a comprehensive operational dataset from a prominent bike-sharing platform in Asia. In our reduced-form analysis, we first establish that decisions regarding the repair or replacement of defective bike components significantly influence the likelihood of the bike being returned for maintenance in a short timeframe. Subsequently, we delve into the development of a structural estimation model to examine how repair workers make diagnostic decisions and how these decisions impact the overall maintenance expenses for the platform.
 

Bio:

Hailong Cui is an Assistant Professor at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His main research interest is in Supply Chain (Sustainability) and Retail Operations (Product Returns, Food/Grocery Delivery).

In his research, he utilizes primary/secondary data, analytical models (optimization, game theory), empirical methods (causal inference, structural estimation), and machine learning (high-dimensional statistics, deep learning) to study operational innovations and strategies to improve environmental, economic, and societal outcomes.

He obtained a Ph.D. in Data Sciences and Operations at the USC Marshall School of Business in 2020. Before his Ph.D. study, he worked at American Express and HSBC in the United States.