Providing the right staffing levels is of paramount importance in most service centers. Excess capacity is costly, yet a lack of sufficient capacity leads to unacceptably low service levels which may be even costlier. When determining staffing levels for a service center it is, therefore,...

Decision analysts commonly use low-order discrete approximation of probability distributions to reduce computational effort. We have found that three popular discretization methods can lead to serious errors in certain applications, among them, news vendor problem and scheduling decisions for...

The paper studies coordination of a supply chain when the inventory is managed by the vendor (VMI). We also provide a general mathematical framework that can be used to analyze contracts under both retailer managed inventory (RMI) and VMI. Using a simple news-vendor scenario with a single vendor...

We analyze a continuous review (Q, r) stochastic inventory model in which orders placed with a make-to-order manufacturer can be shipped via two alternative freight modes differing in lead time and costs. The costs of placing an order and using each freight mode consist of fixed components and...