We focus on backup agreements between a catalog company and manufacturers---a scheme to provide upstream sourcing flexibility for fashion merchandise. A backup agreement states that if the catalog company commits to a number of units for the season, the manufacturer holds back a constant...

Quick Response (QR) is a movement in the apparel industry to shorten lead time. Under QR, the retailer has the ability to adjust orders based on better demand information. We study how a manufacturer-retailer channel impacts choices of production and marketing variables under QR in the apparel...

We focus on a logistics system where inventory is held at three levels: the customers, the retail store, and the warehouse. Retail customer segments are heterogeneous and differ in their reservation prices for product as well as their holding costs. They purchase product from a retail store...

The primary challenge for an urban bus system is to maintain constant headways between successive buses. Most bus systems try to achieve this by adherence to a schedule; but this is undermined by the tendency of headways to collapse, so that buses travel in bunches. To counter this, we propose a...