An important observation in supply chain management, known as the bullwhip effect, suggests that demand variability increases as one moves up a supply chain. In this paper we quantify this effect for simple, two-stage supply chains consisting of a single retailer and a single manufacturer. Our...

In traditional supply chain inventory management, orders are the only information firms exchange, but information technology now allows firms to share demand and inventory data quickly and inexpensively. We study the value of sharing these data in a model with one supplier, N identical...

This paper presents a multistage supply chain model that is based on Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time-series models. Given an ARIMA model of consumer demand and the lead times at each stage, it is shown that the orders and inventories at each stage are also ARIMA, and...

In this paper, new data from the south west of England are used to illustrate that defence dependent firms are likely to purchase more inputs locally than less defence-dependent firms. The results confirm that the defence industry's supply chain has unusual characterises and that defence...

Manufacturers often use returns policies to encourage retailers to stock and price items more aggressively. We focus on the effect that such policies have on both a retailer's and a manufacturer's profits when the retailer must commit prior to the selling season to both a stocking quantity and a...

This paper examines the inventories of publicly traded American manufacturing companies between 1981 and 2000. The median of inventory holding periods were reduced from 96 days to 81 days. The average rate of inventory reduction is about 2% per year. The greatest reduction was found for...

We value the option of subcontracting to improve financial performance and system coordination by analyzing a competitive stochastic investment game with recourse. The manufacturer and subcontractor decide separately on their capacity investment levels. Then demand uncertainty is resolved and...

Process flexibility, whereby a production facility can produce multiple products, is a critical design consideration in multiproduct supply chains facing uncertain demand. The challenge is to determine a cost-effective flexibility configuration that is able to meet the demand with high...

This paper models a type of vendor-managed inventory (VMI) agreement that occurs in practice called a (z, Z) contract. We investigate the savings due to better coordination of production and delivery facilitated by such an agreement. The optimal behavior of both the supplier and the retailer are...

This paper considers a production-scheduling problem arising when there are random yields and demands as well as two sequential production periods before demand occurs. A typical instance is the production of seed corn. The paper makes three contributions. First, we verify that the objective...