Customer segments form multi-level hierarchical trees in many supply chain planning problems. Sebastian Vogel provides a comprehensive formal overview of such multi-stage customer hierarchies and characterizes the corresponding demand fulfillment problem. Here, the process of quota reservation and allocation planning usually has to be performed iteratively. This is particularly difficult for decentral planners who have only limited information transparency. A new superior allocation scheme for decentral decision makers is derived which exploits the level of customer heterogeneity in sub-trees.

Autorentext

Dr. Sebastian Vogel wrote his dissertation under Prof. Dr. Herbert Meyr's supervision at the Chair of Production and Supply Chain Management at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.

Zusammenfassung
This book extends the existing demand fulfillment research by considering multi-stage customer hierarchies. Basis is a two-step allocation and consumption planning procedure. In the existing literature, it is assumed that the customer segments are 'flat'. This means they can be sorted easily during the allocation planning step by a single central planner in decreasing order of profitability. In the subsequent consumption planning phase, if order requests differ in terms of profit margins, companies can render prioritized service in real time to their most profitable customers by consuming the reserved quotas.

Inhalt
Supply Chain Planning and Demand Fulfillment.- Available-to-Promise.- Multi-Stage Customer Hierarchies.- Allocation Planning and Disaggregation in Customer Hierarchies.