Collaborative Research: Managing Material Flow and Cash Flow in the Supply Chain

该合作研究项目的目的是开发新的模型，帮助企业同时做出生产和财务决策。 生产决策（例如，何时生产和生产多少，何时订购和订购多少）和财务决策（例如，短期借款、发放股息）在公司中是相互关联的。 本项目将把生产和库存控制的最新成果与金融领域的成果以及随机规划的新方法结合起来，开发出能够帮助企业在需求不确定性和金融约束的情况下同时做出生产和财务决策的模型。将建立同时作出生产和财务决定的模型，并研究财务限制对生产决定的影响。这是由与工业界合作的经验所推动的。 这些研究任务提供了将传统生产和库存控制建模的最新技术与金融相结合的潜力。 如果成功的话，研究将为管理人员提供问题的结构性结果和有意义的见解;以及改进生产和库存计划的有用工具。决策工具将整合物质流和资金流，帮助企业在不确定性的情况下同时做出生产和财务决策。 这些模型将通过工业合作伙伴的实际使用进行演示。

The purpose of this collaborative research project is to develop new models that can help firms make their production and financial decisions simultaneously. Production decisions (e.g., when to produce and how much to produce, when to order and how much to order) and financial decisions (e.g., short term borrowing, issuing of dividends) are interrelated in a firm. This project will integrate recent results in production and inventory control with those in finance, as well as new methodologies in stochastic programming, to develop models that can help firms make their production and financial decisions simultaneously in the presence of demand uncertainty and financial constraints.In this research, models will be developed for making production and financial decisions simultaneously and study the effect of financial constraints on production decisions. This is motivated by experience working with industry. The research tasks offer the potential to integrate the state of the art in traditional production and inventory control modeling with finance. If successful, the research will provide structural results for the problems and meaningful insights for managers; and, useful tools for improvement in production and inventory planning. The decision tools will integrate material flows and financial flows and help firms make production and financial decisions simultaneously in the presence of uncertainty. The models will be demonstrated through actual use by industrial partners.