No abstract

Using the right transshipment policy is important when transshipments are exercised under demand uncertainty. Optimal transshipment policy can be quite complex in a multi-firm system as optimal actions depend on all system variables. Moreover, both how to select requested retailer and how to respond to requests are in question. We introduce simple, close-to-optimal heuristic transshipment policies for multiple retailers. We first show that heuristic policies may perform even better than self-optimal policy, which is explained by Braess's paradox. Then we test the performances of various heuristics with respect to centrally optimal policy. When retailers can observe others' inventory levels, more effective transshipments can be made. Otherwise, a random selection performs quite well. We also observe that although always-accept respond policy is quite close to centrally optimal in small systems, the performance of pairwise-optimal holdback levels to respond requests is more clear and consistent for larger systems.

No abstract

a b s t r a c tTheoretical studies show that compared to decentralized inventory management, (i) pooling inventories for different demand sources decreases the optimal safety stock, which in turn decreases inventory costs and (ii) the decrease in stock is related to the correlation between the different demand sources and variabilities of demands. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) provide a business context to investigate the effects of correlation and variability of the merging firms' demands on potential improvements in inventory performance through inventory pooling. While merging firms may not fully centralize their inventory decisions, the coordination of inventory and supply chain decisions may result in synergies. Using firm-level data for 270 same-industry mergers carried out in U.S. between 1981 and 2009, we find that the inventory turnover of bidder and target firms improves (relative to firms in their industry) following the successful completion of mergers. The improvement in turnover is especially pronounced in deals where the demand of bidder and target firms are negatively correlated prior to the merger. Our results provide novel empirical support for the predictions of theoretical models on inventory economies in M&A.

No abstract