Forskolin is a promising medicinal compound belonging to a plethora of specialized plant metabolites that constitute a rich source of bioactive high-value compounds. A major obstacle for exploitation of plant metabolites is that they often are produced in small amounts and in plants difficult to cultivate. This may result in insufficient and unreliable supply leading to fluctuating and high sal...

In this paper, we develop a multi-objective stochastic programming approach for supply chain design under uncertainty. Demands, supplies, processing, transportation, shortage and capacity expansion costs are all considered as the uncertain parameters. To develop a robust model, two additional objective functions are added into the traditional comprehensive supply chain design problem. So, our m...

Most business negotiations in supply chain and information exchange in manufacturing processes are heavily human-involved using proprietary data formats. The processes of negotiation and information exchange are usually time consuming and unreliable even in routine tasks. Software agents have been increasingly explored to improve the information flow and the decision-making process within netwo...

This research considers a supply chain under the following conditions: (i) two heterogeneous suppliers are in competition, (ii) supply capacity is random and pricing is endogenous, (iii) consumer demand, with and without an intermediate retailer, is price dependent. Specifically, we examine how uncertainty in supply capacity affects optimal ordering and pricing decisions, supplier and retailer ...

W study sourcing in a supply chain with three levels: a manufacturer, tier 1 suppliers, and tier 2 suppliers prone to disruption from, e.g., natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods. The manufacturer may not directly dictate which tier 2 suppliers are used but may influence the sourcing decisions of tier 1 suppliers via contract parameters. The manufacturer’s optimal strategy depends cri...

Mobile robots are often needed for long duration missions. These include search rescue, sentry, repair, surveillance and entertainment. Current power supply technology limit walking and climbing robots from many such missions. Internal combustion engines have high noise and emit toxic exhaust while rechargeable batteries have low energy densities and high rates of self-discharge. In theory, fue...