一个基于数量折扣的变质商品定价和库存模型

建立了一个变质率为指数分布基于数量折扣的变质商品定价和库存模型，模型考虑资本的时间价值性，给出了模型解的算法．计算结果表明，资本的时间价值性和商品的变质特性对最优决策者有重要影响．     

Managing Production and Distribution for Supply Chains in the Processed Food Industry

We develop and evaluate a modeling approach for making periodic review production and distribution decisions for a supply chain in the processed food industry. The supply chain faces several factors, including multiple products, multiple warehouses, production constraints, high transportation costs, and limited storage at the production facility. This problem is motivated by the supply chain structure at Amy's Kitchen, one of the leading producers of natural and organic foods in the United States. We develop an enhanced myopic two‐stage approach for this problem. The first stage determines the production plan and uses a heuristic, and the second stage determines the warehouse allocation plan and uses a non‐linear optimization model. This two‐stage approach is repeated every period and incorporates look‐ahead features to improve its performance in future periods. We validate our model using actual data from one factory at Amy's Kitchen and compare the performance of our model to that of the actual operation. We find that our model significantly reduces both inventory levels and stockouts relative to those of the actual operation. In addition, we identify a lower bound on the total costs for all feasible solutions to the problem and measure the effectiveness of our model against this lower bound. We perform sensitivity analysis on some key parameters and assumptions of our modeling approach.     

RFID‐Enabled Visibility and Retail Inventory Record Inaccuracy: Experiments in the Field

Accurate inventory records are key to effective store execution, affecting forecasting, ordering, and replenishment. Prior empirical research, however, shows that retailer inventory records are inherently inaccurate. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enables visibility into the movement of inventories in the supply chain. Using two different field experiments, the current research investigates the effectiveness of this visibility in reducing retail store inventory record inaccuracy (IRI). Study 1 used an interrupted time‐series design and involved daily physical counts of all products in one category in 13 stores (8 treatments and 5 controls) of a major global retailer over 23 weeks. Results indicate a significant decrease in IRI of approximately 26% due to RFID‐enabled visibility. Using an untreated control group design with pre‐test and post‐test, Study 2 expands the number of categories to five and the number of stores to 62 (31 treatment and 31 control stores). Results show that the effectiveness of RFID in reducing IRI varies by category (ranging from no statistically significant improvement to 81%). Results also suggest that RFID ameliorates the effects of known determinants of IRI and provide the key insight that the technology is most effective for product categories characterized by these determinants.     

开放经济下人民币汇率制度选择分析

2 0世纪 80年代以来 ,金融全球化趋势日渐明显 ,伴随着资本流动的加快和汇率波动的频繁 ,金融危机时有发生。而历次金融危机都与汇率制度的安排和国际资本流动密切相关 ,这使得汇率制度的选择成为各国政府无法回避的理论和现实问题。中国现行的汇率制度是以市场供求为基础的、单一的、有管理的浮动汇率制 ,其实质是“有管理而无浮动”的固定汇率制 ,面对“入世”后金融业的对外开放和资本项目的逐步放开 ,目前的汇率制度将受到严峻挑战。本文从现行汇率制度的缺陷入手 ,以蒙代尔 -弗莱明模型为理论分析框架 ,着重对人民币汇率的市场化改革提供政策建议     

Optimal Planning Quantities for Product Transition

The replacement of an existing product with a new one presents many challenges. In particular, uncertainties in a new product introduction often lead to extreme cases of demand and supply mismatches. This paper addresses inventory planning decisions for product upgrades when there is no replenishment opportunity during the transition period. We allow product substitution: when a company runs out of the old product, a customer may be offered the new product as a substitute. We show that the optimal substitution decision is a time‐varying threshold policy and establish the optimal planning policy. Further, we determine the optimal delay in a new product introduction, given the initial inventory of the old product.     

ABC Classification: Service Levels and Inventory Costs

ABC inventory classifications are widely used in practice, with demand value and demand volume as the most common ranking criteria. The standard approach in ABC applications is to set the same service level for all stock keeping units (SKUs) in a class. In this paper, we show (for three large real life datasets) that the application of both demand value and demand volume as ABC ranking criteria, with fixed service levels per class, leads to solutions that are far from cost optimal. An alternative criterion proposed by Zhang et al. performs much better, but is still considerably outperformed by a new criterion proposed in this paper. The new criterion is also more general in that it can take criticality of SKUs into account. Managerial insights are obtained into what class should have the highest/lowest service level, a topic that has been disputed in the literature.     

An Advanced Heuristic for Multiple‐Option Spare Parts Procurement after End‐of‐Production

After‐sales service is a major source of profit for many original equipment manufacturers in industries with durable products. Successful engagement in after‐sales service improves customer loyalty and allows for competitive differentiation through superior service like an extended service period during which customers are guaranteed to be provided with service parts. Inventory management during this period is challenging due to the substantial uncertainty concerning demand over a long time horizon. The traditional mechanism of spare parts acquisition is to place a large final order at the end of regular production of the parent product, causing major holding costs and a high level of obsolescence risk. With an increasing length of the service period, more flexibility is needed and can be provided by adding options like extra production and remanufacturing. However, coordinating all three options yields a complicated stochastic dynamic decision problem. For that problem type, we show that a quite simple decision rule with order‐up‐to levels for extra production and remanufacturing is very effective. We propose a heuristic procedure for parameter determination which accounts for the main stochastic and dynamic interactions in decision making, but still consists of relatively simple calculations that can be applied to practical problem sizes. A numerical study reveals that the heuristic performs extremely well under a wide range of conditions, and therefore can be strongly recommended as a decision support tool for the multi‐option spare parts procurement problem. A comparison with decision rules adapted from practice demonstrates that our approach offers an opportunity for major cost reductions.     

Design of Stockless Production Systems

In make‐to‐stock production systems finished goods are produced in anticipation of demand. By contrast, in stockless production systems finished goods are not produced until demand is observed. In this study we investigate the problem of designing a multi‐item manufacturing system, where there is both demand‐ and production‐related uncertainty, so that stockless operation will be optimal for all items. For the problem of interest, we focus on gaining an understanding of the effect of two design variables: (i) manufacturing speed—measured by the average manufacturing rate or, equivalently, the average unit manufacturing time, and (ii) manufacturing consistency—measured by the variation in unit manufacturing times. We establish conditions on these two variables that decision makers can use to design stockless production systems. Managerial implications of the conditions are also discussed.     

冲击型负荷下的生产存储模型研究

建立了考虑冲击需求、变化生产率的最优生产存储库存策略. 其特点是:把一个生产周 期分为多个生产阶段,各个生产阶段时间可以不同;在每个生产阶段中,允许生产率小于需求 率,允许提前生产;而且,最大生产率要小于最大需求率. 研究发现,为满足冲击需求,提前存储 较多而启动机器数量较少,或提前存储较少而启动机器数量较多,不一定能够取得最佳效益, 要根据存储费用和启动费用共同确定. 在有限生产率的条件下,得出一种寻求最优生产- 库存 策略,为此类库存系统的管理决策提供了理论依据.     

Optimal Ordering Policies for Stochastic Inventory Problems with Observed Information Delays

Information delays exist in an inventory system when it takes time to collect, process, validate, and transmit inventory/demand data. A general framework is developed in this paper to describe information flows in an inventory system with information delays. We characterize the sufficient statistics for making optimal decisions. When the ordering cost is linear, the optimality of a state‐dependent base‐stock policy is established even when information flows are allowed to cross over time. Additional insights into the problem are obtained via a comparison between our models and the models with stochastic order lead times. We also show that inventory can substitute for information and vice versa.