We study the impact of yield uncertainty (supply side) and self-interested consumers (demand side) on the inefficiency in the influenza vaccine supply chain. Previous economic studies, focusing on demand side, find that the equilibrium demand is always less than the socially optimal demand...

Jordan and Graves (Jordan, W. C., S. C. Graves. 1995. Principles on the benefits of manufacturing process flexibility. Management Sci. 41(4) 577-594) initiated a stream of research on supply chain flexibility, which was furthered by Graves and Tomlin (Graves, S. C., B. T. Tomlin. 2003. Process...

It is well known that flexibility can be created in manufacturing and service operations by using multipurpose production sources such as cross-trained labor, flexible machines, or flexible factories. We focus on flexible service centers, such as inbound call centers with cross-trained agents,...

Product architecture and organizational communication play significant roles in complex product development efforts. By using networks to characterize both product structure and communication patterns, we examine the impact of mismatches between these on new product development (NPD)...

Most performance evaluation models in the operations management literature implicitly assume that tasks possess standardized completion criteria. However, in many systems, particularly service and professional work, judgment is frequently required to determine how much time to allocate to a...

As companies outsource more product design and manufacturing activities to other members of the supply chain, improving end-product quality has become an endeavor extending beyond the boundaries of the firms' in-house process capabilities. In this paper, we discuss two contractual agreements by...