Distribution centers (DCs) replenish stores with size-specific ship-packs. The ship-packs may be eaches (i.e. individual units), inners (a group of individual units), or cases (a group of inners). The problem that we consider is to determine the ship-pack to use for each stock-keeping-unit. The...

This paper studies how to design service outsourcing contracts to ensure fast, quality services from an independent service provider. The outsourcer does not have perfect information about either the service provider's capacity cost (i.e., cost for providing fast service), or her quality cost...

We ask whether, in China, geographic location has explanatory power for firms' inventory turn, and why. To do this, we undertake a variance component analysis (VCA) of firm-level inventory turn, using a panel dataset of 1,531 unique Chinese firms spanning 1999-2008. Our identification arises...

We review inventories in mainland China by evaluating the trajectory of aggregate inventories in recent decades, and then modelling the relationship of inventories in some 300,000 manufacturers with respect to volume (using cost of goods sold), industry (using SIC codes), and geographical...

In this paper, we study the contracting issues in an outsourcing supply chain consisting of a user company and a call center that does outsourcing work for the user company. We model the call center as a G/G/s queue with customer abandonment. Each call has a revenue potential, and we model the...

We consider the order-fulfillment process of a supplier producing a customized capital good, such as production equipment, commercial aircraft, medical devices, or defense systems. As is common in these industries, prior to receiving a firm purchase order from the customer, the supplier receives...