We model the situation where the productivity of members of a group, such as a salesforce, is periodically evaluated; those whose performance is sub-par are dismissed and replaced by new members. Individual productivity is modeled as a random variable, the distribution of which is a function of an...

Expanding product variety and high customer service provision are both major challenges for manufacturers to compete in the global market. In addition to many ongoing programs, such as lead-time reduction, redesigning products and processes so as to delay the point of product differentiation is...

The value of information sharing and how it could address the bullwhip effect have been the subject of studies in the literature. Most of these studies used different forms of demand models, assuming that no order smoothing was used by the retailer and that the supplier has full knowledge of the...

In this paper, the joint problem of ordering and offering price discount by a supplier to his sole/major buyer is analyzed. The objective is to induce the buyer to alter his order schedule and size so that the supplier can benefit from lower set up, ordering, and inventory holding costs. We...

In multi-echelon repairable inventory systems with high set-up cost for order and/or high demand rates, the use of batch ordering may be more cost-effective than the common (S - 1, S) ordering policy. This paper addresses the issue of determining the optimal order batch size and stocking levels...

This paper describes a study of Navy recruiter productivity at the individual recruiter level. Timeseries of monthly contract production by each of 345 recruiters who served for six months or more during the period May 1977--December 1978 formed the basis of the study. A wide variation in job...

Successful vendor-vendee relationship is viewed as an important ingredient for maintaining competitiveness in the current marketplace. This calls for a careful and comprehensive approach in selecting vendors. The cost of quality (or better phrased as the cost of "unquality") resulted from...

(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...

This paper deals with the lot sizing problem in which the key features of imperfections in a production process are explicitly modelled. These features include: process shifting to out-of-control states, detection of the out-of-control shifts, corrective actions following the detections, and the...

Information integration efforts between manufacturers and retailers, in the form of information sharing, synchronized replenishment, and collaborative product design and development, have been cited as major means to improve supply chain performance. This paper develops a conceptual framework...