Working Papers

These papers are working drafts of research which often appear in final form in academic journals. The published versions may differ from the working versions provided here.

SSRN Research Paper Series

The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.

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Optimal Control of High-Volume Assemble-to-Order Systems

Erica Plambeck, Amy Ward
2005

We consider an assemble-to-order system with a high volume of prospective customers arriving per unit time. Our objective is to maximize expected infinite horizon discounted profit by choosing product prices, component production capacities, and…

Optimal Control of High-Volume Assemble-to-Order Systems with Delay Constraints

Erica Plambeck, Amy Ward
2005

We consider an assemble-to-order system with a high volume of prospective customers arriving per unit time. A companion paper established that with optimal product prices, component production capacity, and sequencing of orders for assembly, the…

Implications of Breach Remedy and Renegotiation for Design of Supply Contracts

Erica Plambeck, Terry Taylor
2004

A manufacturer writes supply contracts with N buyers. Then, the buyers invest in innovation, and the manufacturer builds capacity. Finally, demand is realized, and the firms renegotiate the supply contracts to achieve an efficient allocation of…

Implications of Renegotiation for Optimal Contract Flexibility and Investment

Erica Plambeck, Terry Taylor
2004

After entering into supply contracts, firms often later renegotiate the terms of those contracts. For example, firms that obtain market demand information after signing supply contracts may benefit by renegotiating the contracts to allow buyers…

Partnership in a Dynamic Production System

Erica Plambeck, Terry Taylor
2004

This paper considers two firms that engage in joint production. The prospect of repeated interaction introduces dynamics in that actions that firms take today influence the costliness and effectiveness of actions in the future. Repeated…

Self-Interested Routing in Queueing Networks

Ali Parlakturk, Sunil Kumar
2004

We study self-interested routing in stochastic networks, taking into account the discrete stochastic dynamics of such networks. We analyze a two station multiclass queueing network in which the system manager chooses the scheduling rule used, and…

Higher Supply Chain Security with Lower Cost: Lessons from Total Quality Management

Hau L. Lee, Seungjin Whang
2003

Supply chain security has become a major concern to the private and public sector, after the disastrous event of September 11, 2001. Prior to September 11, 2001, supply chain security concerns were related to controlling theft and reducing…

When Do Employees Become Entrepreneurs?

Thomas Hellmann
2002

Many new firms are started by entrepreneurs who got the idea while working for their previous employer. Sometimes employers also agree to develop their employees’ ideas internally. This paper develops a multi-task incentives model to analyze…

Primum Non Nocere: Avoiding Harm to Vulnerable Wait List Candidates in an Indirect Kidney Exchange

Stefanos Zenios, Lainie Ross
2001

Background: One proposal to increase kidney transplantation is to exchange kidneys between pairs of ABO-incompatible (or crossmatch -incompatible) living donors and their recipients. One variation that has greater potential exchanges living donor…

Optimal Sizing and Timing of Modular Capacity Expansions

Alexandar Angelus, Evan L. Porteus, Samuel C. Wood
2000

We build a discrete time, serially correlated stochastic demand, nonstationary, finite horizon, capacity expansion model that includes (1) economies of scale in capacity costs, (2) positive expansion lead times, and (3) a fixed maximum cumulative…

Simultaneous Production and Capacity Management under Stochastic Demand for Perishable Goods

Evan L. Porteus, Alexander Angelus
2000

This paper derives the optimal simultaneous capacity and production plan for a high volatility, short life-cycle, produce-to-stock, product that requires (at least some) dedicated production capacity. Capacity can be reduced as well as added, at…

Customer Service Competition in Capacitated Systems

Joseph M. Hall, Evan L. Porteus
1999

We investigate a simple dynamic model of firm behavior in which firms compete by investing in capacity that is used to provide a good or service to their customers. There is a fixed total market of customers whose demands for the good or service…

Diffusion of Innovation under Supply Constraints

Sunil Kumar, Jayashankar M. Swaminathan
1999

In this paper we present a canonical setting that illustrate the need for explicitly modeling interactions between manufacturing and marketing/sales decisions in a firm. We consider a single firm that sells an innovative product with a given…

Evidence-Based Organ Allocation

Lawrence M. Wein, Stefanos Zenios, Glenn Chertow
1999

Background. There is sufficient cadaveric kidney supply to meet the demands of suitable transplant candidates. The comparative equity and efficiency characteristics of alternative organ allocation strategies have not been rigorously examined.…

Optimal Operating Policies for Multi-Plant Stochastic Manufacturing Systems In a Changing Environment

Lode Li, Evan L. Porteus, Hongtao Zhang
1999

This paper addresses the horizontal coordination between production units located in different countries within a supply chain in a changing environment. Our model incorporates (1) congestion and delay through uncertainties in demand and…

Responsibility Tokens in Supply Chain Management

Evan L. Porteus
1999

The decentralized supply chain management scheme of Lee and Whang (1999) can be viewed as operationalizing the decentralized management scheme implicit in Clark and Scarf (1960). This paper proposes the use of what are called responsibility…

Selling to the News Vendor

Martin Lariviere, Evan L. Porteus
1999

Consider selling to a news vendor. A manufacturer markets a product through a retailer who has one opportunity to order before demand is realized. Because of characteristics of the product, norms of the industry, or aspects of the manufacturer-…

The Highbrow Trade-Off: Market Mediation and Success in the Film Industry

Ezra W. Zuckerman, Tai-Young Kim
1999

The present paper applies the mismatch hypothesis to the contemporary American film industry. This proposition, successfully applied to the stock market, holds that failing to gain the attention of the critics who specialize in a product’s…

The Impact of an Integrated Marketing and Manufacturing Innovation

Glen M. Schmidt, Evan L. Porteus
1999

An integrated marketing and manufacturing innovation in this paper is a new substitute product having different attributes and ( possibly) a different unit cost than the current products. We develop a simple single period model that is a…

Information Sharing in a Supply Chain

Hau L. Lee, Seungjin Whang
1998

Advances in information system technology have had a huge impact on the evolution of supply chain management. As a result of such technological advances, supply chain partners can now work in tight coordination to optimize the chain-wide…