Problem definition: We study a problem of a retailer who orders from two competing strategic suppliers subject to independent or correlated disruptions and responds by setting the retail price upon delivery, which we call responsive pricing. The suppliers compete by setting their wholesale...

With the boom of e-commerce, express delivery has been increasingly regarded as a bottleneck and key factor for achieving success. Additionally, whether to include such express delivery service or not is an important yet outstandingly unsolved problem for online retailers. In this regard, this...

We investigate the impact of the process of manufacturing and distribution on the safety stock levels in a supply chain. A pipeline hedging method is used to derive a model for estimating the safety stock levels. We propose methods and guidelines to redesign the manufacturing and distribution...

We study a two-stage purchase contract with a demand forecast update. The purchase contract provides the buyer an opportunity to adjust an initial commitment based on an updated demand forecast obtained at a later stage. An adjustment, if any, incurs a fixed as well as a variable cost. Using a...

We begin with a supplier (she) who wholesales to a retailer (he), and is considering to encroach into the retail market by opening an independent online/offline store to sell directly to consumers (a direct channel encroachment) or by selling directly to consumers through the online platform of...

Managing customer satisfaction in a cost effective way has always been a major challenge faced by inventory managers. We study the problem of a newsvendor selling a perishable product with short-term demand patterns and a long-term service target. The newsvendor determines his long-term order at...

In “Coordination of Supply Chains with Risk-Averse Agents” (POMS, Volume 13, 2004), we study the issue of coordination in supply chains involving risk-averse agents, and define a coordinating contract as one that results in a Pareto-optimal solution acceptable to each agent. We then develop...

The process of delivering goods and services better, faster and cheaper sounds simple but can sometimes be unpredictable and lead to shortages or surpluses. Over the past two decades, the supply chain journey has evolved through a number of distinct phases along with a shift in power from...

A critical assumption in the vast literature on inventory management has been that the current level of inventory is known to the decision maker. Some of the most celebrated results such as the optimality of base-stock policies have been obtained under this assumption. Yet it is often the case...

This paper is concerned with finding an optimal inventory policy for a finite horizon, two-stage inventory model. In this model, products may be manufactured in two stages. The first stage uses raw material from an external supplier and the second stage uses raw material from defective items...