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The main responsibility of resource and delivery managers at Hewlett-Packard (HP) Enterprise Services (HPES) involves matching resources (skilled professionals) with jobs that project opportunities require. The previous Solution Opportunity Approval [...]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2008.05.002 Byline: Alper Sen (a), Alex X. Zhang (b) Keywords: Pricing; Dynamic pricing; Revenue management; Demand learning Abstract: For many industries (e.g., apparel retailing) managing demand through price adjustments is often the only tool left to companies once the replenishment decisions are made. A significant amount of uncertainty about the magnitude and price sensitivity of demand can be resolved using the early sales information. In this study, a Bayesian model is developed to summarize sales information and pricing history in an efficient way. This model is incorporated into a periodic pricing model to optimize revenues for a given stock of items over a finite horizon. A computational study is carried out in order to find out the circumstances under which learning is most beneficial. The model is extended to allow for replenishments within the season, in order to understand global sourcing decisions made by apparel retailers. Some of the findings are empirically validated using data from U.S. apparel industry. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Industrial Engineering, Bilkent University, Bilkent, Ankara 06800, Turkey (b) Hewlett Packard Laboratories, 1501 Page Mill Road, MS 1U 2, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA Article History: Received 11 October 2005; Accepted 5 May 2008

A method for tackling the multiple lot sizing problem in inventory management, by using dynamic programming, is presented.

Numerical results of a periodic-review model for joint demand fulfillment probability in a multi-item inventory system indicated that even if optimal combination order-up-to levels relies on the relation of item demands, a heuristic which disregards the connection is extensively quite effective, given that demand averages and variances are properly accounted for. One advantage of the model is that only the correlations of aggregated item demands in a time is needed, instead of individual orders.

We study the multiple lot sizing problem with interrupted geometric yield distribution. Compared to the binomial and discrete uniform yields, the lot sizing problem with interrupted geometric distribution is less studied. We present results characterizing the behavior of the cost function and optimal lot sizes. These results help us understand the imperfect processes described by the interrupted geometric distribution. We also develop bounds which lead to an efficient numerical procedure with an approximately linear computation time for large problems., 1. Introduction and summary of results The single-stage multiple lot sizing problem with rigid demands and random yields has been studied by Beja [1], Sepehri et al. [2] Grosfeld-Nir and [...]

The advance payment scheme is used when a payment larger than the billed amount is made. The extra payment is effectively a cash deposit for credit towards bills in future periods. This study presents a model for determining the optimal cash deposit amount when there is a fixed per-payment cost; the model balances the tradeoff between the fixed payment cost with the lost interest on the cash deposit. We use a renewal theory approach to obtain the long-term expected total cost per period when the bill amounts in a future period are deterministic, exponentially distributed, normally distributed, or Poisson occurrence based with a constant per occurrence charge. For the first two cases, we obtain explicit expressions for the optimal deposit amount; for the latter two, we give numerical procedures. An example in each case is presented, along with a comparison with the usual pay-each-period strategy. We conclude that the advance payment strategy offers significant cost savings when the per-payment cost is relatively large compared with the lost interest of one period's average bill amount; i.e. when interest rate is low or the average bill amount is small. Key words - cost models, deposit policy, inventory theory application

We consider the single item newsboy problem, where the item can be sold to different demand classes at different prices. The demands are realized sequentially over time. That is, the [...]