Growing interest in designing systems with capacity slack as one form of flexibility raises many questions about its use and its usefulness. In the framework of the economic lot scheduling problem with stochastic demand, we develop on optimization-based model that considers capacity slack,...

Material Requirements Planning or Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) systems originally were designed for a deterministic environment. Often, however, demand for finished products is uncertain and some type of buffering mechanism is necessary to provide desired levels of service. When the...

We consider the problem of setting prices and choosing production quantities for a single product over a finite horizon for a capacity-constrained manufacturer facing price-sensitive demands. There is a fixed cost per production run and a variable cost per unit produced, both of which may vary...

We address the problem of sequencing jobs, each of which is characterized by one of a large number of possible combinations of customer-specified options, on a paced assembly line. These problems arise frequently in the automotive industry. One job must be launched into the system at equal time...

We investigate the problem of determining optimal planned leadtimes in serial production systems in which the actual procurement and processing times may be stochastic. The objective is to minimize the sum of inventory holding costs and job tardiness costs given a customer specified due-date. We...

Manufacturing firms in capital-intensive industries face inherent demand volatility for their products and the inability to change their capacity quickly. To cope with these challenges, manufacturers often enter into contracts with their customers that offer greater certainty of supply in return...

We consider a manufacturer-retailer supply chain for a seasonal product whose demand is weather sensitive. The retailer orders from the manufacturer (supplier) prior to the selling season and then sells to the market. We examine how a manufacturer can structure a weather-linked rebate to improve...