CAREER: Coordination Issues in Retail Operations Management

这个教师早期职业发展（Career）项目的研究目标是开发包含产品种类、产品线选择和定价等问题的运营管理模型。将考虑两个问题：分类计划和产品线选择。在分类计划中，零售商根据要提供的每种产品的款式数量和要携带的库存数量做出决定。这个问题很困难，因为产品之间可能存在替代。将开发包含需求替代的随机库存模型。在产品线选择问题中，零售商必须从一组潜在产品中选择产品子集，并确定每个产品的价格。本研究将采用随机方法，假设消费者的偏好并不确切。对于这两个问题，研究将从首席研究员开发的随机模型开始。这些模型将被扩展到考虑：(1)货架空间和/或库存限制；(2)与产品品种水平有关的需求率；(3)不同细分市场的偏好；(4)零售商/制造商协调。这个职业发展计划的教育目标是扩大学生的教育经验，包括对服务部门重要的问题，如供应链管理。教育计划由三个部分组成：供应链管理研究生课程；对研究生课题研究中的问题进行描述；以及本科生的研究机会。如果成功，本研究将导致解决联合产品线选择，定价和库存管理问题的模型和决策规则的发展。这些模型将提供易于实现的决策规则，零售商可以使用这些规则来改进对产品种类的管理，从而允许零售商在满足各种客户偏好的同时降低库存水平。此外，这些模型将为零售商/制造商在管理产品多样性方面的协调价值提供有用的见解。

The research goal of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER)project is to develop operations management models that incorporate issues such as product variety, product line selection and pricing. Two problems will be considered: assortment planning and product line selection. In assortment planning, the retailer makes decisions regarding the number of styles of each product to offer and how much inventory to carry. This problem is difficult because of the possibility of substitution between products. Stochastic inventory models that incorporate demand substitution will be developed. In the product line selection problem, the retailer must select a subset of products from a set of potential products and determine the price of each product. This research will take a stochastic approach, assuming preferences of consumers are not known exactly. For both problems, the research will start with stochastic models developed by the Principal Investigator. These models will be extended to consider: (1) shelf-space and/or inventory constraints; (2) demand rates that are a function of the level of product variety; (3) preferences that vary by market segment; and (4) tailers/manufacturer coordination. The educational goal of this CAREER development plan is to expand the educational experiences of students to include issues of importance to the service sector, such as supply chain management. The educational plan consists of three components: a graduate course in supply chain management; graduate student research projects on the problems described; and undergraduate research opportunities.If successful, this research will lead to the development of models and decision rules for addressing the joint product line selection, pricing and inventory management problem. These models will provide easily implementable decision rules that can be used by retailers to improve their management of product variety, allowing retailers to reduce inventory levels while satisfying a variety of customer preferences. In addition, these models will provide useful insights into the value of retailer/manufacturer coordination in managing product variety.