Essays on Supply Chain Management: Integration, Information, and Customer

To fulfill the purpose of satisfying customer requirements as efficiently as possible, the area of supply chain management has been broadened substantially in the past decade. A lot of efforts are now shifted to study the integration of activities in key supply chain processes. Moreover, quite some activities, which are considered independent previously, are now taken into consideration with supply chain management. This book follows this trend. We first develop efficient algorithms for the joint transportation and inventory control problem for a single-warehouse multi-retailer inventory system with full truckload shipment. Then we study the role that information plays in a joint production, procurement and inventory control problem for a firm that satisfies stochastic demand through remanufacturing. Finally, we study the impact of customer profile on the profitability of remanufactured products. The new insights offered in these studies should be helpful to professionals in supply chain management who are looking for solutions of related problems or are generally interested in the integration of supply chain management.