Consider a series of companies in a supply chain, each of whom orders from its immediate upstream member. In this setting, inbound orders from a downstream member serve as a valuable informational input to upstream production and inventory decisions. This paper claims that the information...

(This article originally appeared in Management Science, April 1997, Volume 43, Number 4, pp. 546--558, published by The Institute of Management Sciences.) Consider a series of companies in a supply chain, each of whom orders from its immediate upstream member. In this setting, inbound orders...