Due to reusability of program code and learning effects in software development, development cost of custom software typically decreases in time and experience. This creates a first-mover advantage to software developers. The paper studies whether the benefits of declining development costs are...

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Consider a supply chain in which a product must pass through multiple sites located in series before it is finally delivered to outside customers. Incentive problems may arise in this system when decisions are delegated to corresponding site managers, each maximizing his/her own performance...

(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...

In this paper we develop a product life-cycle model that studies a set of strategic choices facing manufacturers as they design the joint product/service bundle for a product which may require maintenance and repair support after its sale. The choice parameters of interest include the product...

This paper investigates the impacts of a secondary market where resellers can buy and sell excess inventories. We develop a two-period model with a single manufacturer and many resellers. At the beginning of the first period resellers order and receive products from the manufacturer, but at the...

Consider a data communication network owned and operated by a single organization. The network has an infinite number of small users and is managed by a system manager (SM) whose objective is to maximize the net value of the system as a whole. The objective of this paper is to study pricing...

In this commentary, we trace back how we pursued research on the bullwhip effect, which resulted in the article published in Management Science. We reflect on the evolution of this concept, the impact that our work has had on industry, the way our work has been used in the teaching of supply...

Bottleneck analysis is a useful tool in capacity planning for centrally controlled network systems. However, under a decentralized network where individual users are allowed to select their own routes, straightforward application of bottleneck analysis does not necessarily yield an optimal...

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...