On November 9, 2023, at the invitation of the School of Management, Associate Professor Wang Zhongbin from the School of Management and Economics, Tianjin University visited the school for academic exchanges and delivered an academic report entitled Dine-in or Food Delivery: A Dilemma of Priority? The Optimal Service Mechanism for Restaurants. The report was hosted by Professor Li Jiliu and attended by some faculty members and graduate students of the School of Management.

At the beginning of the session, Professor Li Jiliu briefly introduced Associate Professor Wang Zhongbin’s research directions, scientific achievements and academic contributions. The teachers and students of the School of Management extended a warm welcome to Associate Professor Wang Zhongbin. In this report, starting from common real-life scenarios, Associate Professor Wang first analyzed several service strategies widely adopted in practical settings and academic research. Subsequently, combining relevant theories and methods such as queuing theory, he analyzed the optimal service modes under different service strategies in both dine-in and food delivery scenarios from the perspectives of customers and restaurants respectively. Finally, he carried out optimal service design through optimization methods and analyzed the optimal service mechanisms for restaurants at different stages. With a highly heuristic approach, Associate Professor Wang’s report unpacked the research problem layer by layer from the basic to the profound with rigorous logic, enabling all participants to benefit greatly.

After the report, Associate Professor Wang Zhongbin conducted in-depth exchanges with the on-site teachers and students on issues such as research problem setting and application promotion. Drawing on his own practical research experience, he also shared insights on research topic selection and strategy formulation. Finally, Professor Li Jiliu made a brief summary of this academic exchange. This report provided an important platform for the faculty and students of the school to broaden their research horizons.

Wang Zhongbin is an Excellent Young Associate Professor at the School of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, and a recipient of the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars. His main research interests include stochastic service operations, queuing economics, and supply chain management in the platform economy. He has presided over 2 projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and 1 project under the Young Talent Support Program of the China Association for Science and Technology. He has also participated as a core member in 1 key project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. As the first author or corresponding author, he has published many academic papers in top international journals of operations management, including Operations Research (OR), Management Science (MS), Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (MSOM) and Production and Operations Management (POM). His relevant academic achievements have won the First Prize of the Best Conference Paper at the National Conference on Supply Chain and Operations Management in 2022 and the First Prize of the Best Paper in Service Science awarded by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in 2021.

Written by/Miao Shuo Reviewed by/Jia Ming