This paper studies supply chain demand variability in a model with one supplier and Nretailers that face stochastic demand. Retailers implement scheduled ordering policies: Orders occur at fixed intervals and are equal to some multiple of a fixed batch size. A method is presented that exactly...

Consider a supplier selling to multiple retailers. Demand varies across periods, but the supplier's capacity and wholesale price are fixed. If demand is high, the retailers' needs exceed capacity, and the supplier must implement an allocation mechanism to dole out production. We examine how the...

Automobile manufacturers in the U.S. supply chain exhibit significant differences in their days of supply of finished vehicles (average inventory divided by average daily sales rate). For example, from 1995 to 2004, Toyota consistently carried approximately 30 fewer days of supply than General...

The bullwhip effect is the phenomenon of increasing demand variability in the supply chain from downstream echelons (retail) to upstream echelons (manufacturing). The objective of this study is to document the strength of the bullwhip effect in industry-level U.S. data. In particular, we say an...

We study the following question: How does competition influence the inventory holdings of General Motors' dealerships operating in isolated U.S. markets? We wish to disentangle two mechanisms by which local competition influences a dealer's inventory: (1) the entry or exit of a competitor can...