Companies in a variety of industries (e.g., airlines, hotels, theaters) often use last-minute sales to dispose of unsold capacity. Although this may generate incremental revenues in the short term, the long-term consequences of such a strategy are not immediately obvious: More discounted...

During development of an innovative product there is often considerable uncertainty about component production cost, and it is of interest for both the manufacturer and the supplier to engage in a collaborative effort to reduce this uncertainty and lower the expected cost. Despite the obvious...

Using a proprietary data set provided by a major manufacturer of aircraft engines, we empirically investigate how product reliability is impacted by the use of two different types of after-sales maintenance support contracts: time and material contracts (T&MC) and performance-based contracts...

This paper studies the impact of competition on a firm's choice of technology (product-flexible or product-dedicated) and capacity investment decisions. Specifically, we model two firms competing with each other in two markets characterized by price-dependent and uncertain demand. The firms make...

A well-studied problem in the literature on airline revenue (or yield) management is the optimal allocation of seat inventory among fare classes, given a demand distribution for each class. In practice, the seat allocation decisions of one airline affect the passenger demands for seats on other...

We analyze the competitive capacity investment timing decisions of both established firms and start-ups entering new markets, which have a high degree of demand uncertainty. Firms may invest in capacity early (when uncertainty is high) or late (when uncertainty has been resolved), possibly at...

Performance-based contracting is reshaping service support supply chains in capital-intensive industries such as aerospace and defense. Known as "power by the hour" in the private sector and as "performance-based logistics" (PBL) in defense contracting, it aims to replace traditionally used...

Internet companies extensively use the practice of drop-shipping, where the wholesaler stocks and owns the inventory and ships products directly to customers at retailers' request. Under the drop-shipping arrangement, the supply chain benefits from risk pooling because the inventory for multiple...

Firms that rely on functioning mission-critical equipment for their businesses cannot afford significant operational downtime due to system disruptions. To minimize the impact of disruptions, a proper incentive mechanism has to be in place so that the suppliers provide prompt restoration and...

Internet technology has allowed for a higher degree of decoupling between the information-intensive sales process and the physical process of inventory management than its brick-and-mortar counterpart. As a result, some Internet retailers choose to outsource inventory and back-end operations to...