Supply chain optimization through production, logistics, and marketing coordination

Profit maximization and customer satisfaction have always been two major objectives of supply chain management. This study supply chain optimization through operations, logistics, and marketing coordination for a firm, which maximizes profit and also maintains certain level of customer satisfaction. We provide a brief description of specific problems considered in this study.; Chapter 2 addresses a lead time and price quotation mode selection problem. Firms should determine whether to follow uniform or differentiated quotation modes. Lead time sensitive (LS) customers have a higher delay cost than price sensitive (PS) customers. Some results are as follows. If LS customers value the product no more than PS customers or if their delay cost is slightly larger than PS customers, uniform quotation mode dominates differentiated quotation mode. Otherwise, which quotation mode is better depends on production and customer characteristics in a firm.; Chapter 3 extends the lead time and price quotation mode selection problem by considering continuous customer types. Uniform quotation mode and differentiated quotation mode are compared under both revenue maximizing and system optimization. We find that uniform quotation mode always dominates differentiated quotation mode in terms of profits and also system benefits.; Chapter 4 studies integrating production scheduling and transportation decisions to reduce shipping costs for finished orders in a make-to-order manufacturing firm, while meeting the delivery due dates promised to customers. When partial delivery is allowed, a non-preemptive EDD schedule is proved to be optimal. When partial delivery is not allowed, efficient and effective heuristic algorithms with numerical experiments are given following an NP-hard complexity analysis.; In chapter 5, a newsvendor problem with advance selling option is analyzed. Consumers have unknown product valuations before the selling season starts. If they buy early, they may realize a negative surplus later. Risk averse consumers are more hesitant than risk neutral consumers to buy early. Our analyses show that a retailer is more likely to sell in advance when the consumer valuation expectation is higher, consumer valuation variability is low, risk averse index is low, or profit margin during the selling season is higher.