Mingli Lecture Hall, Issue 13 of 2021

On January 22, 2021, Mingli Lecture Hall 13th 2021 had the honor to invite Assistant Professor Qi Wei from McGill University to present an academic report entitled "Street Economy: Retail on Wheels Based on Mobility and Accurate Layout". The report is in the form of a Tencent meeting. More than 80 teachers and students including teachers, postgraduates, and off-campus research scholars of the School of Management and Economics participated in this lecture. The host was Associate Professor Zhang Yuli of the Department of Management Engineering of the School of Management and Economics.

In the report, Professor Qi Wei shared his brand-new research results in the retail direction of smart city operation and management. Professor Qi Wei first proposed that urban open space is a new area that can accept retail innovation. In public places, selling products with wheeled stallsmay become ubiquitous in future cities. Secondly, Professor Qi Wei introduced the specific content of his research work in this area, including models for 3 different scenarios, as well as corresponding algorithms and management insights, to understand how to deploy and operate wheeled stalls in the city to expand the stalls economy. Finally, Professor Qi Wei pointed out that due to the mobility of the booth, the flexibility of operation and the adaptability of deployment, the booth economy can provide high-quality services (in terms of proximity to customers and waiting time) without incurring huge costs. On the other hand, these advantages will decrease as customer demand increases. In addition, shortening the waiting time, shortening the walking distance of customers, and extending the shopping time to improve the quality of service pose different challenges to the application, but the booths and operations can be flexibly deployed.

Annex: A Brief Introduction to Professor Qi Wei

Wei Qi (祁炜) is an assistant professor in Operations Management at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. He is also a faculty advisor of the China’s Energy Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His work has contributed to smart city operations concerning urban energy, mobility and retail logistics.He is leading multiple internationally funded research projects, such as Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (FRQSC) - National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Research Program on Smart Cities and Big Data. His research has been published in Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. His cross-disciplinary research has also appeared in the first-tier systems engineering journals such as IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and IEEE Transactions on Smart Gird. Wei earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, an M.S. from UCLA and a B.E. from Zhejiang University, China.