We conducted experiments in a multi-echelon inventory system with two scenarios: no information sharing and full information sharing. The results indicate that the bullwhip effect persists even after traditional causes have been excluded. Moreover, full information sharing cannot guarantee...

We consider a periodic-review inventory system with two suppliers: an unreliable regular supplier that may be disrupted for a random duration, and a reliable backup supplier that can be used during a disruption. The backup supplier charges higher unit purchasing cost and fixed order cost when...

We consider a supply chain consisting of a single supplier and a single retailer with stochastic customer demand, which is operated over an infinite horizon. We propose a delay-in-payment contract to coordinate the supply chain. With this contract, the supplier allows the retailer to pay partial...

In Nash bargaining problem, due to fairness concerns of players, instead of maximizing the sum of utilities of all players, an implementable solution should satisfy some axioms or characterizations. Such a solution can result in the so-called price of fairness, because of the reduction in the...

This paper studies the inventory management problem of dual channels operated by one vendor. Demands of dual channels are inventory-level-dependent. We propose a multi-period stochastic dynamic programming model which shows that under mild conditions, the myopic inventory policy is optimal for...

China is experiencing increased land contamination in recent years. A number of social and economic problems have developed and must be dealt with, in some cases, as a matter of urgency. Those problems have been neglected for years and so far there is no nationwide specific legislation to...

Based on continuous review (r, Q) policy, this paper deals with contracts for vendor managed inventory (VMI) program in a system comprising a single vendor and a single retailer. Two business scenarios that are popular in VMI program are "vendor with ownership" and "retailer with ownership"....

We consider a single-distributor multi-retailer inventory system in six operating scenarios for a finite horizon. Five scenarios are in decentralized control and the other one is in centralized control. Approximate dynamic programming (ADP) procedures are developed to obtain system performances...