Quantitative Methods for a New Configuration of Territorial Units in a Chilean Government Agency Tender Process

Guillermo Durán (), Rafael Epstein (), Cristian Martinez () and Gonzalo Andres Zamorano ()
Additional contact information
Guillermo Durán: Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, FCFM, Universidad de Chile, 8370439 Santiago, Chile; Departamento de Matemática, FCEN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; CONICET, Argentina
Rafael Epstein: Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, FCFM, Universidad de Chile, 8370439 Santiago, Chile
Cristian Martinez: Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, FCFM, Universidad de Chile, 8370439 Santiago, Chile
Gonzalo Andres Zamorano: Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, FCFM, Universidad de Chile, 8370439 Santiago, Chile

Interfaces, 2011, vol. 41, issue 3, 263-277

Abstract: The Junta Nacional de Auxilio Escolar y Becas (JUNAEB) is an agency of the Chilean government with responsibility for promoting the integration and retention of socially vulnerable children in the country's school system. Its services include a school meals program under which private firms bid on supply contracts for territorial units within Chile. Before 2007, these units were defined manually and their attractiveness to potential suppliers varied. This led to a series of problems for the government, both in the contract tender process and the service provided. In this paper, we apply operations research methodologies to determine new configurations of the territorial units to ensure that their attractiveness is similar and that schools in each region of the country receive meal service of similar, good quality. This homogenization of the units' attractiveness helps reduce the uncertainty and bankruptcy risk that suppliers face, thus benefitting the entire system. Since 2007, JUNAEB has used the configurations we proposed.

Keywords: combinatorial auctions; operations research; quantitative methods; territorial units (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.1100.0537 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orinte:v:41:y:2011:i:3:p:263-277

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Interfaces from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().