In this paper, we use a Markov decision process (MDP) to model the joint inventory-promotion decision problem. The state variable of the MDP represents the demand state brought about by changing environmental factors as well as promotion decisions. The demand state in a period determines the...

This paper demonstrates optimal policies for capacitated serial multiechelon production/inventory systems. Extending the Clark and Scarf (1960) model to include installations with production capacity limits, we demonstrate that a modified echelon base-stock policy is optimal in a two-stage...

We study the value of inventory integration (or pooling) for a firm selling a seasonal good over two periods: in the first period the firm charges a high price, and in the second period the firm charges a low price to clear remaining inventory. Consumers are rational and decide when to visit the...

We study the optimal policies of capacitated two-echelon serial inventory systems. For a system with smaller downstream capacity, we fully characterize the optimal policy using an intuitive backward induction. The key lies in two inductive assumptions: (a) if initially the stock level at the...

This paper presents an inventory management policy for a retailer offering a layaway program. Layaway is a service provided by retailers that allows budget constrained consumers who have sufficiently high valuations to pay for a product in several installments rather than at once and obtain the...

This paper advances significantly the literature on the optimality of the base stock policy by generalizing the demand distribution and beginning with a completely general belief prior to be updated as demands are observed over time. As the value function depends on the belief, the functional...

This paper investigates the dynamic inventory model for the case when production in a period is restricted to a finite set of specified values. The model allows the production rate to be any value in the set {0, P, 2P, ..., mP}, where m is a nonnegative integer. It is assumed that the setup cost...

Maintenance operations directly influence the performances of railway vehicles and play a crucial role in railway services to provide uninterrupted and high quality service to passengers. With the exception of preventive activities, the demand of spare parts for maintenance tasks is usually...

We consider a multi-product newsvendor under the law-invariant coherent risk measures. We first establish a few fundamental properties of the model regarding the convexity of the problem, the symmetry of the solution and the impact of risk aversion. Specifically, we show that for identical...

In many real-life contexts, inventory levels are only incompletely observed due to nonobservation of demand, discrepancies in transmitting sales data, transaction errors, spoilage, misplacement, or theft of inventory. We study a periodic review inventory system where the demand is not observed...