Distributed processing has been motivated by many objectives. Among these are a desire to share resources, reduce communications costs (as compared to a centralized processing scheme), increase performance and decrease response time by partitioning tasks and achieve higher system availability...

Consider a data communication network owned and operated by a single organization. The network has an infinite number of small users and is managed by a system manager (SM) whose objective is to maximize the net value of the system as a whole. The objective of this paper is to study pricing...

In this commentary, we trace back how we pursued research on the bullwhip effect, which resulted in the article published in Management Science. We reflect on the evolution of this concept, the impact that our work has had on industry, the way our work has been used in the teaching of supply...

Bottleneck analysis is a useful tool in capacity planning for centrally controlled network systems. However, under a decentralized network where individual users are allowed to select their own routes, straightforward application of bottleneck analysis does not necessarily yield an optimal...

Consider a series of companies in a supply chain, each of whom orders from its immediate upstream member. In this setting, inbound orders from a downstream member serve as a valuable informational input to upstream production and inventory decisions. This paper claims that the information...

This paper studies the incentives behind the adoption of radio-frequency identification (RFID) in a supply chain. One prominent feature of RFID technology is that once RFID tags are attached on the items at an upstream site, the same tags can be reused at its downstream sites at lower or zero...

Stereotypically, marketing is mainly concerned about satisfying customers and manufacturing is mainly interested in factory efficiency. Using the principal-agent (agency) paradigm, which assumes that the marketing and manufacturing managers of the firm will act in their self-interest, we seek...

The resource manager of a firm is faced with capacity and pricing decisions with regard to a congestion-prone system such as computer/communication facilities. Difficulties arise since the manager is uninformed of the system demand when the capacity decision is to be made. A game-theoretic model...

Price protection is a commonly used practice between manufacturers and retailers in the personal computer (PC) industry, motivated by drastic declines of product values during the product life cycle. It is a form of rebate given by the manufacturer to the retailer for units unsold at the...

Due to reusability of program code and learning effects in software development, development cost of custom software typically decreases in time and experience. This creates a first-mover advantage to software developers. The paper studies whether the benefits of declining development costs are...