Surveys suggest that supply chain risk is a growing issue for executives and that supplier reliability is of particular concern. A common mitigation strategy is for the buying firm to expend effort improving the reliability of its supply base. We explore a model in which a firm can source from...

Demand forecasts do not become consistently more accurate as they are updated. We present examples demonstrating this counterintuitive phenomenon and some theoretical results to explain its occurrence. Specifically, we analyze the effect of demand randomness on forecast-update performance. A...

Market pressure for low prices paired with customer demand for high product variety presents a considerable dilemma for many manufacturers. Industry practice and research to date suggest that approaches based on component commonality can substantially lower the costs of proliferated product...