Platelets are short-life blood components used in hospital blood transfusion centers. Excluding time for transportation, testing, and arrangement, clinically transfusable platelets have a mere three-day life span. This paper analyzes a periodic review inventory system for such a perishable...

This paper is inspired by the recurring mismatch between demand and supply in the U.S. influenza vaccine market. Economic theory predicts that an oligopolistic market with unregulated but costly entry will experience excess entry and oversupply, not the undersupply observed in the market for...

The ISO 9000 series of quality management systems standards is widely diffused, with more than 560,000 sites certified in 152 countries as of December 2003. Anecdotal evidence suggests that global supply chains contributed to this diffusion, in the following sense. Firms in Europe were the first...

Eppen (1979) showed that inventory costs in a centralized system increase with the correlation between multivariate normal product demands. Using multivariate stochastic orders, we generalize this statement to arbitrary distributions. We then describe methods to construct models with arbitrary...

We study competition between two multiproduct firms with distinct production technologies in a market where customers have heterogeneous preferences on a single taste attribute. The mass customizer (MC) has a perfectly flexible production technology and thus can offer any variety within a...

The literature on mass customization generally focuses on the tradeoff between higher revenues from better matching customer preferences with product specifications, and higher costs of offering a broader--possibly fully customized--product line. Less well understood is the tradeoff between the...

The view that adopting an environmental perspective on operations can lead to improved operations is in itself not novel; phrases such as "lean is green" are increasingly commonplace. The implication is that any operational system that has minimized inefficiencies is also more environmentally...

When managing projects with considerable uncertainty, such as those arising in construction, defense, and new product development, it is customary for a manufacturer (project manager) to offer contracts under which each supplier (contractor) receives a prespecified payment when she completes her...

The complexity of managing a category assortment has grown tremendously in recent years due to the increased product turnover and proliferation rates in most categories. It is an increasingly difficult task for managers to find an effective assortment due to uncertain consumer preferences and...

Recent cases of product adulteration by foreign suppliers have compelled many manufacturers to rethink approaches to deterring suppliers from cutting corners, especially when manufacturers cannot fully monitor and control the suppliers' actions. In this paper, we study three mechanisms for...