We examine a single-item, periodic-review inventory system with stochastic leadtimes, in which a replenishment order is delivered immediately or one period later, depending probabilistically on costly effort. The objective is to determine a joint inventory policy and effort-choice strategy that...

This paper examines the introduction of information-sharing into the supply chains for pharmaceutical products in the United States. This introduction was unusual for several reasons. First, it was catalyzed from outside the industry, by a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation...

A one-warehouse N-retailer deterministic inventory system is examined. The objective is to determine the stocking policy which minimizes average system cost per unit time over the infinite time horizon. Necessary properties of an optimal policy are derived, and optimal solutions for the...

We are indebted to Jack Muckstadt and Howard Singer for calling our attention to two errors in [Graves, S. C., Schwarz, L. B. 1977. Single cycle continuous review policies for arborescent production/inventory systems. Management Sci. 23 (5, January) 529-540.].

More than twenty years after the publication of the Linear Decision Rule (LDR) of Holt, Modigliani, Muth, and Simon (HMMS), the LDR remains an implementation failure. No company is reported to be using it. This paper hypothesizes that the reason for this failure may be a very simple one: the...

This paper develops and analyzes a principal-agent model for product specification and production motivated by Ücore buyingÝ decisions at an automobile manufacturer. The model focuses on two important elements of the ÜcoreÝ buyer's responsibility: (1) assessing the supplier's capability, and...

We consider the problem of a newsvendor that is served by multiple suppliers, where any given supplier may be unreliable. By unreliable we simply mean that the marginal amount received from a supplier is no more than, and typically is less than, the marginal amount ordered from the supplier. In...