Scholars@Duke
Jing-Sheng Song

Jing-Sheng Song

R. David Thomas Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Fuqua School of Business

Selected Publications

Dynamic Pricing and Inventory Control for Substitutable Products Based on Market Conditions

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · January 1, 2026 Problem definition: We study optimal integrated inventory and pricing decisions for substitutable products over a finite planning horizon with full backlogging and nonstationary costs and demands. The objective is to maximize the total expected discounted ... Full text Cite

Optimal Dual-Sourcing Inventory Policies with Order Tracking: Backlogging and Lost Sales Under Uncertain Lead Times

Journal Article Operations Research · November 1, 2025 This study explores the effective use of order-tracking information in dual-sourcing inventory systems in both backlogging and lost-sales settings. Our inventory model features a normal source, comprising a two-stage tandem queue with Erlang-distributed pr ... Full text Cite

The Blockchain Newsvendor: Value of Freshness Transparency and Smart Contracts

Journal Article Management Science · August 1, 2025 Motivated by blockchain applications in the fresh produce industry, we consider a newsvendor problem in which a retailer faces stochastic and freshness-dependent consumer demand. The retailer can adopt blockchain technology to have more transparent informa ... Full text Cite

Supply chain resilience: A review from the inventory management perspective.

Journal Article Fundamental research · March 2025 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains, leading to economic damage and product shortages caused by demand surges and supply disruptions. Concurrently, geopolitical conflicts and the rising frequency of natural disasters d ... Full text Cite

Predictive Three-Dimensional Printing of Spare Parts with Internet of Things

Journal Article Management Science · March 1, 2025 Industry 4.0 integrates digital and physical technologies to transform work management, where two core enablers are the internet of things (IoT) and threedimensional printing (3DP). IoT monitors complex systems in real time, whereas 3DP enables agile manuf ... Full text Cite

Conditional Lead-Time Flexibility in an Assemble-to-Order System

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · November 1, 2024 Problem definition: We introduce and formalize a concept termed conditional lead-time flexibility (CLF), which refers to the industry practice where a manufacturer requests that its upstream suppliers dynamically adjust the pipeline orders' remaining lead ... Full text Cite

Digitizing Spare Parts Supply Chain via 3D Printing: An Operational Cost Analysis

Journal Article Informs Transactions on Education · September 1, 2024 Full text Cite

Structural basis for the H2AK119ub1-specific DNMT3A-nucleosome interaction.

Journal Article Nat Commun · July 23, 2024 Isoform 1 of DNA methyltransferase DNMT3A (DNMT3A1) specifically recognizes nucleosome monoubiquitylated at histone H2A lysine-119 (H2AK119ub1) for establishment of DNA methylation. Mis-regulation of this process may cause aberrant DNA methylation and path ... Full text Link to item Cite

Editorial Statement—Operations Management

Journal Article Management Science · May 2024 Full text Cite

Index-Based Yield Protection for Smallholder Farmers

Journal Article · February 21, 2024 Cite

Operational Research: methods and applications

Journal Article Journal of the Operational Research Society · January 1, 2024 Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first summarises t ... Full text Cite

Effect of Guided Delegation and Information Proximity on Multitier Responsible Sourcing

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · November 1, 2023 Problem definition: Guided delegation, a practice in which companies provide guidelines when delegating supplier management to tier 1 firms, is a common practice in managing complex supply chains. We study the benefits and risks of this approach in a three ... Full text Cite

Predictive 3D Printing Spare Parts with IoT

Journal Article · September 16, 2023 Cite

Assemble-to-order systems

Journal Article · August 15, 2023 Cite

Cloud Computing Value Chains: Research from the Operations Management Perspective

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · July 1, 2023 Problem definition: Cloud computing is recognized as a critical driver of information technology-enabled innovations. The operations management (OM) community, however, has not been exposed enough to the essential operations problems that arise from the ma ... Full text Cite

Managing Social Responsibility in Multitier Supply Chains

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · November 1, 2022 Problem definition: We study the management of social responsibility in a three-tier supply chain with a tier 2 supplier selling to a tier 1 supplier, in turn selling to a tier 0 buyer. The tier 2 supplier may violate social and environmental standards, re ... Full text Cite

Contracting Mechanisms for Stable Sourcing Networks

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · September 1, 2022 Problem definition: We study profit allocation for a sourcing network, in which a buyer sources from a set of differentiated suppliers with limited capacity under uncertain demand for the final product. Whereas the buyer takes the lead in forming the sourc ... Full text Cite

Optimal Policies for a Multi-Echelon Inventory Problem with Service Time Target and Expediting

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · July 1, 2022 Problem definition: We study the optimal inventory ordering, expediting, and allocation decisions in a multiechelon supply chain over a finite horizon, in which customer orders are quoted with a fixed fulfillment time window, termed the service time target ... Full text Cite

Smart Policies for Multisource Inventory Systems and General Tandem Queues with Order Tracking and Expediting

Journal Article Operations Research · July 1, 2022 We study an inventory system with multiple supply sources and expediting options. The replenishment lead times from each supply source are stochastic, representing congestion and disruption.We construct a family of smart ordering and expediting policies th ... Full text Cite

Fight inventory shrinkage: Simultaneous learning of inventory level and shrinkage rate

Journal Article Production and Operations Management · June 1, 2022 In 2020, inventory shrinkage eroded $61.7 billion profit in the U.S. retail industry. Unfortunately, fighting inventory shrinkage to protect retailers' already slim profits is challenging due to unknown shrinkage rates and invisible inventory levels. While ... Full text Cite

Managing hospital platelet inventory with mid-cycle expedited replenishments and returns

Journal Article Production and Operations Management · May 1, 2022 Motivated by the need of small and medium-sized hospitals to improve their platelet inventory management and achieve best practices, we consider an inventory system for a perishable product with a three-period shelf life over a finite horizon. In the syste ... Full text Cite

Stewardship and Family Caregiving for People with Dementia in Shanghai.

Journal Article Medical anthropology · May 2022 Technologies such as medical treatment, assistive care devices, and monitoring tools represent strategies for dealing with the progression of dementia. Drawing on ethnographic data from Shanghai, this study examines how family caregivers engage with techno ... Full text Cite

Data-Driven Dynamic Pricing and Ordering with Perishable Inventory in a Changing Environment

Journal Article Management Science · March 1, 2022 We consider a retailer that sells a perishable product, making joint pricing and inventory ordering decisions over a finite time horizon of T periods with lost sales. Exploring a real-life data set from a leading supermarket chain, we identify several dist ... Full text Cite

Prepositioning and Local Purchasing for Emergency Operations Under Budget, Demand, and Supply Uncertainty

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · January 1, 2022 Problem definition: Considering a mix of prepositioning and local purchasing, common to cover humanitarian demands in the aftermath of a rapid-onset disaster, we propose policies to determine preposition stock. These formulations are developed in the prese ... Full text Cite

Transforming COVID-19 vaccines into vaccination : Challenges and opportunities for management scientists.

Journal Article Health care management science · September 2021 Amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, the miraculous breakthroughs of multiple effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines offer hopeful prospects. Yet, the endgame of the pandemic is not vaccines; it is vaccination. The daunting challenge of vaccinating the worl ... Full text Cite

Optimizing Assemble-to-Order Systems: Decomposition Heuristics and Scalable Algorithms

Journal Article HKUST Business School Research Paper · August 18, 2021 Cite

Direct sourcing or agent sourcing? Contract negotiation in procurement outsourcing

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · March 1, 2021 Problem definition: In a supply network consisting of a buyer, a purchasing agent, and a supplier, the buyer can procure the component from the supplier directly and rely on the purchasing agent for complementary services (named direct sourcing (DS)) or au ... Full text Cite

Demand shaping through bundling and product configuration: A dynamic multiproduct inventory-pricing model

Journal Article Operations Research · March 1, 2021 In today's digital age, with the aid of the internet and data mining, many firms use vertically differentiated product bundling to influence demand to match up with inventory status, especially in industries with short product life cycles. Despite this pra ... Full text Cite

Editorial Statement—Operations Management

Journal Article Management Science · November 2020 Full text Cite

Stock or print? impact of 3-d printing on spare parts logistics

Journal Article Management Science · September 1, 2020 We present a general framework to study the design of spare parts logistics in the presence of three-dimensional (3-D) printing technology. We consider multiple parts facing stochastic demands and adopt procure/manufacture-to-stock versus print-ondemand to ... Full text Cite

Modeling payment timing in multiechelon inventory systems with applications to supply chain coordination

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · March 1, 2020 Problem definition: How can one adapt multiechelon inventory models to capture the cash flows generated by various payment-timing contracts? What competitive inventory policy behavior arises under these various payment-timing arrangements? Academic/practic ... Full text Cite

Capacity and inventory management: Review, trends, and projections

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · January 1, 2020 We present a reproducible, objective review of research trends using text mining and citations of papers published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management during its first 20 years whose abstracts or keywords contain capacity or inventory. The rev ... Full text Cite

Data-driven scalable E-commerce transportation network design with unknown flow response

Conference Interconnected Supply Chains in an Era of Innovation Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Information Systems Logistics and Supply Chain Ils 2020 · January 1, 2020 Motived by the experience with a large online marketplace, we study a middle-mile network design problem in e-commerce. One novel feature in our problem is that while we decide the network configuration, the network flow and shortfall are controlled by the ... Full text Cite

Retail clusters in developing economies

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · January 1, 2019 We develop a game-theoretic model to explore why retail clusters are so popular in developing economies and when governments should facilitate the formation of retail clusters to improve social welfare. First, we find two determinants of retailer clusters: ... Full text Cite

The cash flow advantages of 3PLS as supply chain orchestrators

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · January 1, 2019 With an increasingly open global economy and advanced technologies, some third-party logistics providers (3PLs), such as Eternal Asia, have emerged as supply chain orchestrators, linking buyers with manufacturers worldwide. In addition to their traditional ... Full text Cite

Long-term partnership for achieving efficient capacity allocation

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 2019 We consider a capacity provider and a group of independent buyers who partner to share a scarce but expensive-to-build capacity over a finite horizon under privately informed demand conditions. At the beginning of the time horizon, the capacity provider mu ... Full text Cite

Exploiting big data in logistics risk assessment via Bayesian nonparametrics

Journal Article Operations Research · November 1, 2017 In cargo logistics, a key performance measure is transport risk, defined as the deviation of the actual arrival time from the planned arrival time. Neither earliness nor tardiness is desirable for customer and freight forwarders. In this paper, we investig ... Full text Cite

Serial inventory systems with markov-modulated demand: Derivative bounds, asymptotic analysis, and insights

Journal Article Operations Research · September 1, 2017 We study inventory control of serial supply chains with continuous, Markovmodulated demand (MMD). Our goal is to simplify the computational complexity by resorting to certain approximation techniques, and, in doing so, to gain a deeper understanding of the ... Full text Cite

Closed-form approximations for optimal (r, q) and (S, T) policies in a parallel processing environment

Journal Article Operations Research · September 1, 2017 We consider a single-item continuous-review (r, q) inventory system with a renewal demand process and independent, identically distributed stochastic lead times. Using a stationary marked-point process technique and a heavy-traffic limit, we prove a previo ... Full text Cite

Supply Chain Models with Mutual Commitments and Implications for Social Responsibility

Journal Article Production and Operations Management · July 1, 2017 In today's increasingly globalized environment, more and more companies recognize the mutual dependence of supply chain partners in value creation. When making business decisions, they take into consideration their partners’ bottom line profitability, espe ... Full text Cite

Cost reduction through operations reversal

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · May 16, 2017 In some manufacturing and service processes, several stages must be performed, but there is some freedom in the ordering of stages. Operations reversal means switching the order of two stages. Several authors have studied the benefits of operations reversa ... Full text Cite

Effect of partial cross ownership on supply chain performance

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · April 16, 2017 Partial cross ownership (PCO) in a dyad supply chain refers to a situation where each firm holds a portion of its partner's shares. We study this topic in push and pull supply chains, and prove that neither the supply chain's nor any member's profit change ... Full text Cite

Optimal policies for a dual-sourcing inventory problem with endogenous stochastic lead times

Journal Article Operations Research · March 1, 2017 We consider a single-product, two-source inventory system with Poisson demand and backlogging. Inventory can be replenished through a normal supply source, which consists of a two-stage tandem queue with exponential production time at each stage. We can al ... Full text Cite

Coordinating a Semi-Centralized Global Production Network Through Different Levels of Headquarters Involvement

Journal Article Production and Operations Management · February 1, 2017 Motivated by our experience with a global company, we propose and study the concept of a semi-centralized supply chain and analyze its coordination issues. We focus on a supply chain consisting of a home plant and a foreign branch, both of which are under ... Full text Cite

Building Supply Chain Resilience through Virtual Stockpile Pooling

Journal Article Production and Operations Management · October 1, 2016 Stockpiling inventory is an essential strategy for building supply chain resilience. It enables firms to continue operating while finding a solution to an unexpected event that causes a supply disruption or demand surge. While extremely valuable when actua ... Full text Cite

Supply chain planning for random demand surges: Reactive capacity and safety stock

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · September 1, 2016 Globalization, innovation, social media, and exposure to natural and man-made disasters have increased organizations' need to cope with demand surges: random, significant increases in demand in an otherwise relatively stable demand environment. To build su ... Full text Cite

Equilibrium Joining Strategies and Optimal Control of a Make-to-Stock Queue

Journal Article Production and Operations Management · September 1, 2016 We consider a make-to-stock, finite-capacity production system with setup cost and delay-sensitive customers. To balance the setup and inventory related costs, the production manager adopts a two-critical-number control policy, where the production starts ... Full text Cite

Optimal and asymptotically optimal policies for assemble-to-order n- and W-systems

Journal Article Naval Research Logistics · December 1, 2015 We consider two specially structured assemble-to-order (ATO) systems - the N- and W-systems - under continuous review, stochastic demand, and nonidentical component replenishment leadtimes. Using a hybrid approach that combines sample-path analysis, linear ... Full text Cite

On properties of discrete (r, q) and (s, T) inventory systems

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · August 16, 2013 We consider single-item (r, q) and (s, T) inventory systems with integer-valued demand processes. While most of the inventory literature studies continuous approximations of these models and establishes joint convexity properties of the policy parameters i ... Full text Cite

Supply streams

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · June 1, 2013 Asupply stream is a continuous version of a supply chain. It is like a series inventory system, but stock can be held at any point along a continuum, not just at discrete stages. We assume stationary parameters and aim to minimize the long-run average tota ... Full text Cite

Good and bad news about the 4S1 T 5 policy

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · December 1, 2012 This paper studies the optimization of the 4S1 T 5 inventory policy, where T is the replenishment interval and S is the order-up-to level. First, we demonstrate that the previously established joint convexity of the long-run average cost is false. Hence, t ... Full text Cite

Newsvendor problems with sequentially revealed demand information

Journal Article Naval Research Logistics · January 1, 2012 This article analyzes a capacity/inventory planning problem with a one-time uncertain demand. There is a long procurement leadtime, but as some partial demand information is revealed, the firm is allowed to cancel some of the original capacity reservation ... Full text Cite

An approximation for the inverse first passage time problem

Journal Article Advances in Applied Probability · March 1, 2011 We propose an approximation for the inverse first passage time problem. It is similar in spirit and method to the tangent approximation for the original first passage time problem. We provide evidence that the technique is quite accurate in many cases. We ... Full text Cite

Outsourcing structures and information flow in a three-tier supply chain

Journal Article International Journal of Production Economics · November 1, 2010 We consider a three-tier supply chain consisting of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), a contract manufacturer (CM) and a supplier. We analyze and compare three outsourcing structures that are currently implemented by top-tier OEMs: (1) inhouse cons ... Full text Cite

No-Holdback allocation rules for continuous-time assemble-to-order systems

Journal Article Operations Research · May 1, 2010 This paper analyzes a class of common-component allocation rules, termed no-holdback (NHB) rules, in continuous-review assemble-to-order (ATO) systems with positive lead times. The inventory of each component is replenished following an independent base-st ... Full text Open Access Cite

The effect of lead time and demand uncertainties in (r, q) inventory systems

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 2010 We study a single-item (r, q) inventory system, where r is the reorder point and q is the order quantity. The demand is a compound-Poisson process. We investigate the behavior of the optimal policy parameters and the long-run average cost of the system in ... Full text Open Access Cite

Free riding in a multi-channel supply chain

Journal Article Naval Research Logistics · December 1, 2009 Free riding in a multichannel supply chain occurs when one retail channel engages in the customer service activities necessary to sell a product, while another channel benefits from those activities by making the final sale. Although free riding is, in gen ... Full text Cite

The value of component commonality in a dynamic inventory system with lead times

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · June 1, 2009 Component commonality has been widely recognized as a key factor in achieving product variety at low cost. Yet the theory on the value of component commonality is rather limited in the inventory literature. The existing results were built primarily on sing ... Full text Cite

Coordination mechanisms in decentralized serial inventory systems with batch ordering

Journal Article Management Science · April 1, 2009 This paper studies a periodic-review, serial supply chain in which materials are ordered and shipped according to (R,nQ) policies. Three information scenarios are considered, depending on the level of information available: echelon, local, and quasilocal. ... Full text Cite

Inventories with multiple supply sources and networks of queues with overflow bypasses

Journal Article Management Science · March 1, 2009 Consider an inventory system with multiple supply sources and Poisson demand. The replenishment lead times from each source are stochastic, representing congestion and disruption. We develop performance evaluation and optimization tools for a family of rea ... Full text Cite

Managing an assemble-to-order system with returns

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · January 1, 2009 We consider a multiproduct assemble-to-order (ATO) system, in which inventory is kept only at the component level and the finished products are assembled in response to customer demands. In addition to stochastic demand for finished products, the system ex ... Full text Cite

Analysis of perishable-inventory systems with censored demand data

Journal Article Operations Research · July 1, 2008 We consider a multiperiod inventory system of a perishable product with unobservable lost sales. Demand distribution parameters are unknown and are updated periodically using the Bayesian approach based on the censored historical sales data. We develop an ... Full text Cite

"Bricks-and-mortar" vs. "clicks-and-mortar": An equilibrium analysis

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · June 16, 2008 The Internet has provided traditional retailers a new means with which to serve customers. Consequently, many "bricks-and-mortar" retailers have transformed to "clicks-and-mortar" by incorporating Internet sales. Examples of companies making such a transit ... Full text Cite

Lead times, component costs and allocation rules in the value of component commonality

Journal Article Icmsem Proceedings of 2007 International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management · December 1, 2007 Component commonality has been widely recognized as a key factor in achieving product variety at low cost. Yet, the theory on the value of component commonality is rather limited in the operations management literature. The existing results were built prim ... Cite

Serial supply chains with economies of scale: Bounds and approximations

Journal Article Operations Research · September 1, 2007 We consider two models of stochastic serial inventory systems with economies of scale for which the forms of optimal policies are known. In the first model, each stage has a fixed-order quantity, while in the second model, there is a fixed-order cost for e ... Full text Cite

Rebate, returns and price protection policies in channel coordination

Journal Article IIE Transactions Institute of Industrial Engineers · February 1, 2007 We study channel coordination policies for products subject to midlife price declines during their short product life cycles. Using a two-period supply chain model consisting of one supplier and one retailer, we identify policies and/or conditions under wh ... Full text Cite

Inventory planning with forecast updates: Approximate solutions and cost error bounds

Journal Article Operations Research · November 1, 2006 We consider a finite-horizon, periodic-review inventory model with demand forecasting updates following the martingale model of forecast evolution (MMFE). The optimal policy is a state-dependent base-stock policy, which, however, is computationally intract ... Full text Cite

A closed-form approximation for serial inventory systems and its application to system design

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · October 9, 2006 We analyze a serial base-stock inventory model with Poisson demand and a fill-rate constraint. Our objective is to gain insights into the linkage between the stages to facilitate optimal system design and decentralized system control. To this end, we devel ... Full text Cite

On "the censored newsvendor and the optimal acquisition of information"

Journal Article Operations Research · November 1, 2005 Full text Cite

Backorder minimization in multiproduct assemble-to-order systems

Journal Article IIE Transactions Institute of Industrial Engineers · August 1, 2005 We consider a multiproduct assemble-to-order system. Components are built to stock with inventory controlled by base-stock rules, but the final products are assembled to order. Customer orders of each product follow a batch Poisson process. The leadtimes f ... Full text Cite

A series system with returns: Stationary analysis

Journal Article Operations Research · March 1, 2005 This paper analyzes a series inventory system with stationary costs and stochastic demand over an infinite horizon. A distinctive feature is that demand can be negative, representing returns from customers, as well as zero or positive. We observe that, as ... Full text Cite

Order-based cost optimization in assemble-to-order systems

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 2005 We study a multi-item stochastic inventory system in which customers may order different but possibly overlapping subsets of items, such as a multiproduct assemble-to-order system. The goal is to determine the right base-stock level for each item and to id ... Full text Cite

On measuring supplier performance under vendor-managed-inventory programs in capacitated supply chains

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · December 1, 2004 As widely accepted performance measures in supply chain management practice, frequency-based service levels such as fill rate and stockout rate are often considered in supply contracts under vendor-managed-inventory (VMI) programs. Using a decentralized tw ... Full text Cite

Supply Chain Operations: Assemble-to-Order Systems

Journal Article Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science · December 1, 2003 Full text Cite

Erratum to Bounds in "Serial Production/Distribution Systems Under Service Constraints"

Journal Article Manufacturing & Service Operations Management · June 2003 We noticed an error in the upper bound on the optimal system stock in Boyaci and Gallego (2001). We provide a procedure to compute the correct bound. ... Cite

Order fill rate, leadtime variability, and advance demand information in an assemble-to-order system

Journal Article Operations Research · March 1, 2003 We study an assemble-to-order system with stochastic leadtimes for component replenishment. There are multiple product types, of which orders arrive at the system following batch Poisson processes. Base-stock policies are used to control component inventor ... Full text Cite

Newsvendor bounds and heuristic for optimal policies in serial supply chains

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2003 We consider the classic N-stage serial supply systems with linear costs and stationary random demands. There are deterministic transportation leadtimes between stages, and unsatisfied demands are backlogged. The optimal inventory policy for this system is ... Full text Cite

The central warehouse location problem revisited

Journal Article IMA Journal of Management Mathematics · January 1, 2003 This paper is concerned with the optimal location of a central warehouse, given a fixed number and the locations of the local warehouses. We investigate whether the solution determined by the traditional model that minimizes total transportation cost diffe ... Full text Cite

The Effectiveness of Several Performance Bounds for Capacitated Production, Partial-Order-Service, Assemble-to-Order Systems

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · January 1, 2003 We consider an assemble-to-order (ATO) system: Components are made to stock by production facilities with finite capacities, and final products are assembled only in response to customers' orders. The key performance measures in this system, such as order ... Full text Cite

Order-based backorders and their implications in multi-item inventory systems

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2002 In a multi-item inventory system, such as an assemble-to-order manufacturing system or an online-retailing system, a customer order typically consists of several different items in different amounts. The average order-based backorders are the average numbe ... Full text Cite

Performance analysis and optimization of assemble-to-order systems with random lead times

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 2002 We study a single-product assembly system in which the final product is assembled to order whereas the components (subassemblies) are built to stock. Customer demand follows a Poisson process, and replenishment lead times for each component are independent ... Full text Cite

Optimal policies for multiechelon inventory problems with Markov-modulated demand

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 2001 This paper considers a multistage serial inventory system with Markov-modulated demand. Random demand arises at Stage 1, Stage 1 orders from Stage 2, etc., and Stage N orders from an outside supplier with unlimited stock. The demand distribution in each pe ... Full text Cite

Note on assemble-to-order systems with batch ordering

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2000 We study an assemble-to-order inventory system. The stocks are held for components, with final products assembled only when customer orders are realized. Customer orders form a multivariate compound Poisson process, component replenishment leadtimes are co ... Full text Cite

Contract Assembly: Dealing with Combined Supply Lead Time and Demand Quantity Uncertainty

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · January 1, 2000 We consider a problem faced by a contract assembler that both assembles finished goods and procures the associated component parts for one of its major customers. Because of rapid changes in technology and ongoing engineering changes, all parts subject to ... Full text Cite

Order-fulfillment performance measures in an assemble-to-order system with stochastic leadtimes

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 1999 We study a multicomponent, multiproduct production and inventory system in which individual components are made to stock but final products are assembled to customer orders. Each component is produced by an independent production facility with finite capac ... Full text Cite

Price, delivery time guarantees and capacity selection

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · November 16, 1998 This paper studies the impact of using delivery time guarantees as a competitive strategy in service industries where demands are sensitive to both price and delivery time. We assume that delivery reliability is crucial, and investment in capacity expansio ... Full text Cite

On the order fill rate in a multi-item, base-stock inventory system

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 1998 A customer order to a multi-item inventory system typically consists of several different items in different amounts. The probability of satisfying an arbitrary demand within a prespecified time window, termed the order fill rate, is an important measure o ... Full text Cite

Inventory control with information about supply conditions

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1996 This paper presents an inventory-control model which includes a Markovian model of the supply system. As that system evolves over time, so do the replenishment leadtimes. The optimal policy has the same structure as in standard models, but its parameters c ... Full text Cite

Evaluation of base-stock policies in multiechelon inventory systems with state-dependent demands. Part II: State-dependent depot policies

Journal Article Naval Research Logistics · January 1, 1996 We consider a two-echelon inventory system where the exogenous demands occur only at the retailer locations, and the demand rates are functions of an underlying continuous-time Markov chain. This underlying process may represent, for example, general econo ... Full text Cite

Managing inventory with the prospect of obsolescence

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 1996 How should inventory management respond when there is a possibility of imminent obsolescence (or, more generally, deteriorating demand)? We use an inventory-control model to address this question. The model incorporates a Markovian submodel to describe the ... Full text Cite

The joint effect of leadtime variance and lot size in a parallel processing environment

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1996 We study a basic (r, q) system, in which the demand is a Poisson process and the leadtimes are independent, identically-distributed random variables. The key issue is the joint effect of the leadtime variance and the lot size q on performance. We know that ... Full text Cite

Understanding the lead-time effects in stochastic inventory systems with discounted costs

Journal Article Operations Research Letters · January 1, 1994 This paper explores qualitative effects of lead-time uncertainty in a basic continuous-time single-item inventory model with Poisson demand and stochastic lead times. The objective is to minimize the infinite-horizon expected total discounted cost. Order c ... Full text Cite

Effect of leadtime uncertainty in a simple stochastic inventory model

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1994 We study a basic continuous-time single-item inventory model where demands form a compound Poisson process and leadtimes are stochastic. The performance measure of interest is the long-run average cost. Order costs are linear, so a base-stock policy is opt ... Full text Cite

Inventory control in a fluctuating demand environment

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 1993 We present an inventory model, where the demand rate varies with an underlying state-of-the-world variable. This variable can represent economic fluctuations, or stages in the product life-cycle, for example. We derive some basic characteristics of optimal ... Full text Cite