Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
4959960 | European Journal of Operational Research | 2017 | 12 Pages |
Abstract
The newsvendor problem aims to optimally choose a level of order quantity to respond to a known demand distribution with the objective of maximizing expected return. In practice, the decision maker is often challenged with more complex settings involving multiple decisions and uncertainties. For instance, firms may benefit from choosing the set of customer orders to satisfy. It may also be worthwhile for many firms to select a supply portfolio instead of relying on a single procurement mode. This paper provides novel optimization models and solution techniques that can help businesses to achieve the maximum performance from a given production system by optimally selecting customer demands, procurement quantity, spot market purchase and option contract usage. We specifically focus on the special case of normally distributed random variables, and provide an exact solution method. When the primary procurement quantity is not a decision variable, the problem becomes a version of a Stochastic Knapsack Problem. For this case, we present an efficient heuristic solution algorithm based on properties of an optimal solution and empirically show that it provides high-quality solutions. We also provide a broad numerical study to examine the sensitivity of integrated procurement and demand selection strategies to key problem parameters.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Computer Science
Computer Science (General)
Authors
Yasemin Merzifonluoglu,