UCSF Increases Consumer Value Through Optimal Vendor‐Show Scheduling

The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) spends approximately $600 million annually on goods and services. To lower the total cost of goods purchased while maintaining quality and service, UCSF Strategic Sourcing establishes strategic agreements with select vendors. These agreements are marketed to the campus community through vendor shows that allow vendors to showcase their value proposition directly to UCSF researchers and buyers. This paper formulates the creation of the UCSF vendor‐show schedule as a bipartite matching problem with side constraints, which is then solved using a binary integer program. Of the 3,818 vendor‐show combinations, the model identifies 153 optimal assignments and increases potential incentives by 62 percent compared to the manually generated 2007 schedule. The model also improves vendor diversity and selects the most suitable vendors for each show. Last, it dramatically reduces the time required to generate the schedule. Strategic Sourcing management is pleased with the results and implemented the model for the 2010 vendor‐show season.