Both material sourcing and inventory management are important competitiveness factors, and it is a significant challenge to integrate the two areas. In sourcing, combined strategies using long-term contracts and the spot market received increasing attention recently, typically concentrating on...

Leading companies in several industries purchase materials with the combined use of capacity reservation contracts and spot market. We analyse the optimal and a simplified policy for making long-term capacity reservation and periodic ordering/inventory decisions using the above two sources under...

Emergency supply chain management is often in the focal point of public scrutiny. Expected cost minimization may result in unacceptable high shortage for scenarios with small probabilities that is hardly tolerated by the public. To decrease the loss for the worst-case scenario, the min–max...

This contribution focuses on the cost-effective management of the combined use of two procurement options: the short-term option is given by a spot-market with random price, whereas the long-term alternative is characterized by a multi period capacity reservation contract with fixed purchase...