Title: Potty Parity Process Flexibility via Unisex Restrooms
Speaker: Prof. Ming HU, Rotman School of Management of University of Toronto
Time: 11:00 am, November 24, 2021
Venue: Tencent Meeting
Introduction to the speaker:
Ming Hu is the University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Business Operations and Analytics and a professor of operations management at the Rotman School of Management.
Abstract:
We study the problem of inequitable access to public restrooms by women and the LGBTQ+ community. Individuals enter a restroom based on their gender identity and the expected (or observed) wait time. We consider two measures of potty parity: first, the conventional wait-time parity, and second, our proposed utility parity, which encompasses both wait time and gender identity to estimate users' utility for using a restroom. We analytically show the benefits of having unisex restrooms from various angles: (1) reducing the wait time of women's restroom, (2) enhancing the potty parity of wait times and utilities, (3) increasing safety perception, and (4) improving the system wait time and users’ utility when the arrival rates fluctuate. Moreover, we provide insights on the renovation of existing buildings and designing restrooms from scratch. In particular, (i) we show the process flexibility by having one unit of the unisex restroom, let it be by converting a unit of the men's restroom or building an additional one, goes a long way in terms of improving wait time, user utility, and their disparity. (ii) We show building the women's room and the unisex restroom next to each other (such that users can jockey lines) improves potty parity, (iii) We show that even though an all-unisex restroom design leads to complete parity of wait times, it does not improve the potty parity of utilities but reverses the ranking of users’ utility in the population. (iv) We show that all unisex rooms plus some stalls can push the efficient frontier. Lastly, we also provide a numerical study with empirically calibrated parameters to show the magnitude of the impact of a little flexibility enabled by unisex rooms for a stadium.
