Quantitative models and computer-based tools are essential for making decisions in today's business environment. These tools are of particular importance in the rapidly growing area of supply chain management. This volume is a unified effort to provide a systematic summary of the large variety of new issues being considered, the new set of models being developed, the new techniques for analysis, and the computational methods that have become available recently. The volume's objective is to provide a self-contained, sophisticated research summary - a snapshot at this point of time - in the area of Quantitative Models for Supply Chain Management . While there are some multi-disciplinary aspects of supply chain management not covered here, the Editors and their contributors have captured many important developments in this rapidly expanding field.
The 26 chapters can be divided into six categories.

• Basic Concepts and Technical Material (Chapters 1-6). The chapters in this category focus on introducing basic concepts, providing mathematical background and validating algorithmic tools to solve operational problems in supply chains.
• Supply Contracts (Chapters 7-10). In this category, the primary focus is on design and evaluation of supply contracts between independent agents in the supply chain.
• Value of Information (Chapters 11-13). The chapters in this category explicitly model the effect of information on decision-making and on supply chain performance.
• Managing Product Variety (Chapters 16-19). The chapters in this category analyze the effects of product variety and the different strategies to manage it.
• International Operations (Chapters 20-22). The three chapters in this category provide an overview of research in the emerging area of International Operations.

• Conceptual Issues and New Challenges (Chapters 23-27). These chapters outline a variety of frameworks that can be explored and used in future research efforts.
  This volume can serve as a graduate text, as a reference for researchers and as a guide for further development of this field.

  Zusammenfassung
  The chapters in this category focus on introducing basic concepts, providing mathematical background and validating algorithmic tools to solve operational problems in supply chains. The chapters in this category explicitly model the effect of information on decision-making and on supply chain performance.

  Inhalt

  1. Introduction.- 2. Optimal Policies and Simulation Based Optimization for Capacitated Production Inventory Systems.- 3. Service Levels and Tail Probabilities in Multistage Capacitated Production-Inventory Systems.- 4. On (R, NQ) Policies Serial Inventory Systems.- 5. Competitive Supply Chain Inventory Management.- 6. Vehicle Routing and the Supply Chain.- 7. Supply Contracts with Quantity Commitments and Stochastic Demand.- 8. Supply Chain Contracting and Coordination with Stochastic Demand.- 9. Designing Supply Contracts: Contract Type and Information Asymmetry.- 10. Modeling Supply Chain Contracts: A Review.- 11. Modeling the Impact of Information on Inventories.- 12. Modeling Impacts of Electronic Data Interchange Technology.- 13. Business Cycles and Productivity in Capital Equipment Supply Chains.- 14. The Bullwhip Effect: Managerial Insights on the Impact of Forecasting and Information on Variability in a Supply Chain.- 15. Value of Information Sharing and Comparison with Delayed Differentiation.- 16. Managing Product Variety: An Operations Perspective.- 17. Retail Inventories and Consumer Choice.- 18. The Benefits of Design for Postponement.- 19. Stochastic Programming Models for Managing Product Variety.- 20. Global Sourcing Strategies Under Exchange Rate Uncertainty.- 21. Global Supply Chain Management: A Survey of Research and Applications.- 22. Managing Supply Chains in Emerging Markets.- 23. Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Approaches to Supply Chain Modeling.- 24. Inventory Planning in Large Assembly Supply Chains.- 25. Managing Inventory for Fashion Products.- 26. Inventory Control for Joint Manufacturing and Remanufacturing.- 27. A Taxonomic Review of Supply Chain Management Research.