Demand Flexibility in Supply Chain Planning

This work encapsulates the essential developments in this field into a single resource, as well as to set an agenda for further development in the field. This brief focuses on the demand flexibility in supply chains with fragmented results distributed throughout the literature. These results have strong implications for managing real-world complex operations planning problems.

This book exploits dimensions of demand flexibility in supply chains and characterizes the best fit between demand properties and operations capabilities and constraints. The origins and seminal works are traced in integrated demand and operations planning and an in-depth documentation is provided for the current state of the art. Systems with inherent costs and constraints that must respond to some set of demands at a minimum cost are examined.  Crucial unanswered questions are explored and the high-value research directions  are highlighted for both practice and for the development of new and interesting optimization models and algorithms.

• Inventory control
• Lot sizing
• Market selection
• Production planning and control
• Supply chain management
• Engineering Economics

From the reviews:

“Demand Flexibility in Supply Chain Planning brings together the author’s contributions and ideas for collaborative research on operations planning in situations in which the producer has some control over customer demand. … This book serves as a good foundation for the topic. It is a compact (103 pages), well-structured, and well-written book that provides readers with a good overview of the important aspects of including demand flexibility in operational models.” (Hein Fleuren, Interfaces, Vol. 43 (2), March-April, 2013)

“The book gives an excellent overview of demand flexibility phenomenon in series of problems, which are solved, when a supply chain is designed. … The branch and price approach is broadly discussed in this part of book as a convenient solving tool for this type of problems. … this book constitutes a valuable guide for researchers and advanced students to the field of advanced supply chain planning approaches.” (Jaroslav Janáček, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1239, 2012)

“The book is a compendium of the work of the author … in the area of supply chain operations planning. … the book could be very valuable for a new graduate student. It provides an overview of a number of problems and models in production planning and inventory control from a unified point of view. Also, it illustrates a paradigm of focused research: consider a specific assumption … and analyze the various consequences of this assumption on a multitude of problems and models.” (Serge G. Kruk, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2012 m)

• Dept. Industrial & Systems, Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA

  Joseph Geunes

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