One area in which experimental economics methods have been used to study operations problems is supply-chain management. We survey results from a series of human experiments based on the popular beer distribution game and find cognitive limitations on the part of managers, in particular an underweighting of the supply line. We suggest mechanisms that may alleviate this bias, including sharing i...

In this paper, an inventory management framework and deterministic costs models within the context of this framework are structured for effective supply chain under deterministic and fuzzy environment. In this regard, we propose a bi-echelon multi-product supply chain in which a central manufacturing firm (lower echelon) with warehouse space limitation is fed through different suppliers (upper ...

Since Clark and Scarf’s pioneering work, most advances in multi-echelon inventory systems have been based on demand processes that are time-independent. This paper revisits the serial multi-echelon inventory system of Clark and Scarf, and develops three key results. First, we provide a simple lower bound approximation to the optimal echelon inventory levels and an upper bound to the total syste...

No: 011-0319 Abstract Title: Impact of Inventory Allocation Policies on Downstream Supply Variability in a Multi-echelon System Authors Information: SUMAN NIRANJAN School of Management, State University of New York Binghamton, Vestal, NY 13902 607-777-4120 [email protected] FRANK CIARALLO Biomedical, Industrial, and Human Factors Engineering, Wright State University, Dayton, OH 45435 937-...

Most models of multilevel production and distribution systems assume unlimited production capacity at each site. When capacity limits are introduced, an ineffective policy may lead to increasingly large order backlogs: The stability of the system becomes an issue. In this paper, we examine the stability of a multi-echelon system in which each node has limited production capacity and operates un...

To achieve the highest customer satisfaction at the lowest costs, GE Plastics adopted a global approach to its manufacturing operations. Previously it met demand in one geographic region with production from that region only. It developed a decision-support system (DSS) to optimize the two-echelon global manufacturing supply chain for its high performance polymers division. The DSS uses a math-...

Nowadays, in highly competitive global markets and constant pressure to reduce total costs, enterprises consider group technology and Supply Chain Management (SCM) accordingly and usually separately as the key elements for intra and inter facilities improvement. Simultaneous consideration of the elements of these two disciplines in an integrated design can result in higher efficiency and ...

The supply chain network design not only assists organizations production process (e.g.,plan, control and execute a product’s flow) but also ensure what is the growing need for companies in a longterm. This paper develops a three-echelon supply chain network problem including multiple plants, multiple distributors, and multiple retailers with amulti-mode demand satisfaction policy inside of pro...