This book deals with inventory systems in supply chains that face risks that could render products unsalable. These risks include possible cooling system failures, transportation risks, packaging errors, handling errors, or natural quality deterioration over time like spoilage of food or blood products. Classical supply chain inventory models do not regard these risks. This thesis introduces novel cost models that consider these risks. It also analyzes how real-time tracking with RFID sensors and smart containers can contribute to decision making. To solve these cost models, this work presents new solution methods based on dynamic programming. In extensive computational studies both with experimental as well as real-life data from large players in the retailer industry, the solution methods prove to lead to substantially lower costs than existing solution methods and heuristics.
This comprehensive Handbook provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on quantitative models for inventory management. Despite over half a century’s progress, inventory management remains a challenge, as evidenced by the recent Covid-19 pandemic. With an expanse of world-renowned inventory scholars from major international research universities, this Handbook explores key areas including mathematical modelling, the interplay of inventory decisions and other business decisions and the unique challenges posed to multiple industries.
The contributions included in the volume are drawn from presentations at ODS2019 – International Conference on Optimization and Decision Science, which was the 49th annual meeting of the Italian Operations Research Society (AIRO) held at Genoa, Italy, on 4-7 September 2019. This book presents very recent results in the field of Optimization and Decision Science. While the book is addressed primarily to the Operations Research (OR) community, the interdisciplinary contents ensure that it will also be of very high interest for scholars and researchers from many scientific disciplines, including computer sciences, economics, mathematics, and engineering. Operations Research is known as the discipline of optimization applied to real-world problems and to complex decision-making fields. The focus is on mathematical and quantitative methods aimed at determining optimal or near-optimal solutions in acceptable computation times. This volume not only presents theoretical results but also covers real industrial applications, making it interesting for practitioners facing decision problems in logistics, manufacturing production, and services. Readers will accordingly find innovative ideas from both a methodological and an applied perspective.
The two volumes IFIP AICT 397 and 398 constitute the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the International IFIP WG 5.7 Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems, APMS 2012, held in Rhodes, Greece, in September 2012. The 182 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the two volumes. They are organized in 6 parts: sustainability; design, manufacturing and production management; human factors, learning and innovation; ICT and emerging technologies in production management; product and asset lifecycle management; and services, supply chains and operations.
Retail shelf management means cost-efficiently aligning retail operations with consumer demand. As consumers expect high product availability and low prices, and retailers are constantly increasing product variety and striving towards high service levels, the complexity of managing retail business and its operations is growing enormously. Retailers need to match consumer demand with shelf supply by balancing variety (number of products) and service levels (number of items of a product), and by optimizing demand and profit through carefully calibrated prices. As a result the core strategic decisions a retailer must make involve assortment sizes, shelf space assignment and pricing levels. Rigorous quantitative methods have emerged as the most promising solution to this problem. The individual chapters in this book therefore focus on three areas: (1) combining assortment and shelf space planning, (2) providing efficient decision support systems for practically relevant problem sizes, and (3) integrating inventory and price optimization into shelf management.
This book focuses on supply chains with uncertainty due to random yields. A common assumption in such systems is that the yields are observable only after all transportation or production steps are completed. The actual yield realization however happens earlier during the process. Technological advances and stronger supply chain collaboration make it possible to observe yield realization in real time and therefore close the time gap between the event and the observation. Within this thesis optimal and heuristic policies are developed that make use of this new type of information in various supply chain settings. These policies are used to identify conditions under which real time yield information is particularly beneficial. This book is relevant to both scholars and practitioners interested in managing supply chains with random yields.
An authoritative, quantitative approach to supply chain management Addressing the need for the study of supply chain management to evolve at the same pace as it's real-world practice, Fundamentals of Supply Chain Theory presents the methodology and foundations of the topic and also demonstrates how recent developments build upon classic models. The authors focus on strategic and tactical aspects of supply chain management, covering a broad range of topics from forecasting, inventory management, and facility location to process flexibility, contracting, and auctions. Key mathematical models for optimizing the design, operation, and evaluation of supply chains are presented as well as models currently emerging from the research frontier. Following a thorough introduction, the book delves into a discussion of centralized models, including: Forecasting and demand modeling Deterministic inventory models Stochastic inventory models Multi-Echelon inventory models Processes for dealing with uncertainty in inventory optimization and facility location Facility location models Process flexibility In addition, the authors present decentralized models that involve multiple parties with independent, conflicting objectives, covering topics such as: The bullwhip effect Supply chain contracts Auctions Each chapter concludes with a set of problems that challenge readers to understand, interpret, and extend the discussed models and algorithms. In addition, extensive appendices provide guidance on writing proofs and also outline helpful formulas related to probability theory, calculus, and algebra. Extensively class-tested to ensure an easy-to-follow presentation, Fundamentals of Supply Chain Theory is a suitable book for business and engineering courses on supply chain management at the graduate level. The book also serves as an authoritative reference for academics and practitioners working in the areas of operations research, business, management science, and industrial engineering. This book was named the 2011 Joint Publishers Book of the Year by the Institute of Industrial Engineers. You can also follow Fundamentals of Supply Chain Theory on Twitter.
The five-volume set LNCS 9155-9159 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2015, held in Banff, AB, Canada, in June 2015. The 232 revised full papers presented in 22 workshops and a general track were carefully reviewed and selected from 780 initial submissions for inclusion in this volume. They cover various areas in computational science ranging from computational science technologies to specific areas of computational science such as computational geometry and security.
A perishable item is one that has constant utility up until an expiration date (which may be known or uncertain), at which point the utility drops to zero. This includes many types of packaged foods such as milk, cheese, processed meats, and canned goods. It also includes virtually all pharmaceuticals and photographic film, as well as whole blood supplies. This book is the first devoted solely to perishable inventory systems. The book’s ten chapters first cover the preliminaries of periodic review versus continuous review and look at a one-period newsvendor perishable inventory model. The author moves to the basic multiperiod dynamic model, and then considers the extensions of random lifetime, inclusion of a set-up cost, and multiproduct models of perishables. A chapter on continuous review models looks at one-for-one policies, models with zero lead time, optimal policies with positive lead time, and an alternative approach. Additional chapters present material on approximate order policies, inventory depletion management, and deterministic models, including the basic EOQ model with perishability and the dynamic deterministic model with perishability. Finally, chapters explore decaying inventories, queues with impatient customers, and blood bank inventory control. Anyone researching perishable inventory systems will find much to work with here. Practitioners and consultants will also now have a single well-referenced source of up-to-date information to work with.
In two volumes, Planning Production and Inventories in the Extended Enterprise: A State of the Art Handbook examines production planning across the extended enterprise against a backdrop of important gaps between theory and practice. The early chapters describe the multifaceted nature of production planning problems and reveal many of the core complexities. The middle chapters describe recent research on theoretical techniques to manage these complexities. Accounts of production planning system currently in use in various industries are included in the later chapters. Throughout the two volumes there are suggestions on promising directions for future work focused on closing the gaps.
