Scholars@Duke
Kevin H. Shang

Kevin H. Shang

Joseph J. Ruvane, Jr. Distinguished Professor
Fuqua School of Business
Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Fuqua School of Business, Durham, NC 27708

Scholarly Works - Journal articles

Wait Time–Based Pricing for Queues with Customer-Chosen Service Times

Journal article Management Science · April 1, 2023 This paper studies a pricing problem for a single-server queue where customers arrive according to a Poisson process. For each arriving customer, the service provider announces a price rate and system wait time. In response, the customer decides whether to ... Full text Cite

Impact of Information Asymmetry and Limited Production Capacity on Business Interruption Insurance

Journal article Management Science · April 1, 2022 We consider a firm that faces a potential disruption in its normal operations can purchase business interruption (BI) insurance from an insurer to guard against the disruption risk. The firm makes demand forecasts and can put a recovery effort if a disrupt ... Full text Cite

Investments in renewable and conventional energy: The role of operational flexibility

Journal article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · September 1, 2020 Problem definition: There is an ongoing debate on how providing a subsidy for one energy source affects the investment level of other sources. Academic/practical relevance: To investigate this issue, we study a capacity investment problem for a utility fir ... Full text Cite

Cash beer game

Journal article Foundations and Trends in Technology Information and Operations Management · January 1, 2019 This article introduces a new online simulation game called Cash Beer Game, which is an augmented version of the standard Beer Game by including cash flows. In addition to the inventory ordering and shipping activities, each player pays cash for the ordere ... Full text Cite

Technical note—managing inventory for firms with trade credit and deficit penalty

Journal article Operations Research · January 1, 2019 This paper considers a firm that periodically orders inventory to satisfy demand in a finite horizon. The firm operates under two-level trade credit—that is, it offers trade credit to its customer while receiving one from its supplier. In addition to stand ... Full text Cite

Impact of electricity pricing policies on renewable energy investments and carbon emissions

Journal article Management Science · January 1, 2018 We investigate the impact of pricing policies (i.e., flat pricing versus peak pricing) on the investment levels of a utility firm in two competing energy sources (renewable and conventional), with a focus on the renewable investment level.We consider gener ... Full text Cite

Measuring the bullwhip effect: Discrepancy and alignment between information and material flows

Journal article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · December 1, 2017 The bullwhip effect is a phenomenon commonly observed in supply chains. It describes how demand variance amplifies from a downstream site to an upstream site due to demand information distortion. Two different bullwhip effect measures have been used in the ... Full text Cite

A simple heuristic for joint inventory and pricing models with lead time and backorders

Journal article Management Science · August 1, 2016 We study a joint inventory and pricing problem in a single-stage system with a positive lead time. We consider both additive and multiplicative demand forms. This problem is, in general, intractable due to its computational complexity. We develop a simple ... Full text Cite

Joint inventory and cash management for multidivisional supply chains

Journal article Operations Research · September 1, 2015 This paper develops a centralized supply chain model that integrates material flows with cash flows. The supply chain is owned by a single firm with two divisions. The downstream division (headquarters), facing random customer demand, replenishes materials ... Full text Cite

Optimizing reorder intervals for two-echelon distribution systems with stochastic demand

Journal article Operations Research · March 1, 2015 We consider a periodic-review inventory system in which N non-identical retailers replenish from a warehouse, which further replenishes from an outside vendor with ample supply. Each facility faces Poisson demand and replenishes according to a base-stock p ... Full text Cite

Evaluation of cycle-count policies for supply chains with inventory inaccuracy and implications on RFID investments

Journal article European Journal of Operational Research · August 16, 2014 Inventory record inaccuracy leads to ineffective replenishment decisions and deteriorates supply chain performance. Conducting cycle counts (i.e.; periodic inventory auditing) is a common approach to correcting inventory records. It is not clear, however, ... Full text Cite

Single-stage approximations for optimal policies in serial inventory systems with nonstationary demand

Journal article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · June 1, 2012 Companies often face nonstationary demand due to product life cycles and seasonality, and nonstationary demand complicates supply chain managers' inventory decisions. This paper proposes a simple heuristic for determining stocking levels in a serial invent ... Full text Cite

Improving supply chain performance: Real-time demand information and flexible deliveries

Journal article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · June 1, 2010 In some supply chains, materials are ordered periodically according to local information. This paper investigates how to improve the performance of such a supply chain. Specifically, we consider a serial inventory system in which each stage implements a lo ... Full text Open Access Cite

Optimal and Heuristic Echelon (r,nQ,T) policies in serial inventory systems with fixed costs

Journal article Operations Research · March 1, 2010 This paper studies a periodic-review, serial inventory system in which echelon (r,nQ,T) policies are implemented. Under such a policy, each stage reviews its inventory in every T period and orders according to an echelon (r,nQ,T) policy. Two types of fixed ... Full text Open Access Cite

A simple heuristic for echelon (r, n Q, T) policies in serial supply chains

Journal article Operations Research Letters · November 1, 2009 This paper proposes a simple heuristic that generates a solution for echelon (r, n Q, T) policies by sequentially solving a deterministic demand problem, a subproblem with fixed reorder intervals, and a subproblem with fixed batch sizes. For each of these ... 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

Note: A simple heuristic for serial inventory systems with fixed order costs

Journal article Operations Research · July 1, 2008 We propose a heuristic for finding base order quantities for stochastic inventory models. The heuristic includes two steps. The first clusters the stages according to cost parameters. The second solves a single-stage problem for each cluster with the origi ... Full text 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

Inspection and replenishment policies for systems with inventory record inaccuracy

Journal article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · March 1, 2007 For many companies, inventory record inaccuracy is a major obstacle to achieving operational excellence. In this paper, we consider an inventory system in which inventory records are inaccurate. The manager makes inventory inspection and replenishment deci ... 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

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

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

Newsvendor Bounds and A Heuristic for Optimal Policies in Serial Supply Chains

Journal article Manufacturing & Service Operations Management · January 2002 Full text Cite

Marketing on the Internet - who can benefit from an online marketing approach?

Journal article Decision Support Systems · January 1, 2000 The research builds upon the literature in electronic commerce and past research in marketing with the objective of understanding factors that impact a product's adaptability to online marketing. A review of marketing channel choice literature reveals a se ... Full text Cite