Inventory control is among the most important topics in operations research because of large investments in inventory and their effect on the profitability of the firms. A systematic analysis of inventory problems began with the development of the classical EOQ formula of Ford W. Harris in 1913,...

This paper revives the seminal work of Jack Kenneth (J.K.) Eastham, an economist from the Dundee School of Economics, who in the 1930s wrote on the theoretical aspects of storable commodity markets. First, we present Eastham's contribution and show that despite using a graphical analysis,...

This entry is a brief survey of classical inventory models and their extensions in several directions such as world-driven demands, presence of forecast updates, multi-delivery modes and advanced demand information, incomplete inventory information, and decentralized inventory control in the...

Firms have very different inventory levels. How much of this heterogeneity is due to differences among firms, versus among industries? Using all observations in COMPUSTAT for 1950 through 2004, we find that both industry and firm effects are significant. Further, firm effects are as strong as,...

As well as investing in capital, firms invest in inventories or stocks. For some businesses, investing in. Shops are better able to attract consumers if their shelves are full and they can offer a wide variety of products. Manufacturers are more likely to win contracts if their customers can...

The central issue in supply chain management is to match supply with demand, and the heart of a planning model is the modeling of supply and demand functions. To allow for analytical tractability, the existing literature often assumes almost surely linear supply and demand functions, which...

The literature suggests that the presence of a labor union poses operational risk for firms by reducing operating flexibility. We posit that managers stockpile inventory in response to their heightened operational risk, such as potential strikes, so that managers maintain bargaining power in...