A supply chain is a network that includes vendors of raw materials, plants that transform those materials into useful products, and distribution centers to get those products to customers. Without any specific effort to coordinate the overall supply chain system, each organization in the network has its own agenda and operates independently from the others. [...]

An unmanaged supply chain is not inherently stable. Demand variability increases as one moves up the supply chain away from the retail customer, and small changes in consumer demand can result in large variations in orders placed upstream. Eventually, the network can oscillate in very large swings as each organization in the supply chain seeks [...]

    To minimize supply and demand imbalances in the supply chain, firms utilize various methods of inventory management. The problem is complicated by the fact that demand is uncertain, and this uncertainty can cause stockouts in which inventory is depleted and orders cannot be filled. Here, we discuss a model in which the inventory [...]

  Some firms have successfully improved their supply chain performance by implementing an approach known as Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI). With VMI, the vendor specifies delivery quantities sent to customers through the distribution channel using data obtained from EDI. Vendor Managed Inventory, Just-in-Time Distribution (JITD), and Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) all refer to similar concepts, but [...]

                                  Traditional production systems produce products and stock them as inventory until they are sold (make-to-stock). In order to reduce inventory and increase the level of customization, some firms have designed their production systems to produce a product only after it is ordered. Such [...]

Linear programming is a quantitative analysis technique for optimizing an objective function given a set of constraints. As the name implies, the functions must be linear in order for linear programming techniques to be used.   Problem Formulation Checklist The objective function and constraints are formulated from information extracted from the problem statement. The following [...]