Inventory and Supply Chain Management with Forecast Updates

Inventory and Supply Chain Management with Forecast Updates is concerned with the problems of inventory and supply chain decision making with information updating over time. The models considered include inventory decisions with multiple sources and delivery modes, supply-contract design and evaluation, contracts with exercise price, volume-flexible contracts allowing for spot-market purchase decisions, and competitive supply chains. Real problems are formulated into tractable mathematical models, which allow for an analysis of various approaches, and provide insights for better supply chain management. The book provides a unified treatment of these models, presents a critique of the existing results, and points out potential research directions. Attention is focused on solutions—that is, inventory decisions prior and subsequent to information updates and the impact of the quality of information on these decisions.

Supply chain management research has attracted a great deal of attention over the past ten years. Moreover, it is an area of research that covers an enormous territory involving multiple disciplines. Supply chain management is studied and practiced in both academic as well as by practitioner circles. This is a book that is written for students, researchers, and practitioners across a number of domains including Operations Management Science, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics and Engineering.