Quantitative Models in Supply Chain Management

Supply chains are systems where local optimization fails — what's rational for a retailer wrecks the manufacturer, and demand variance amplifies as you move upstream. This course builds the quantitative machinery to reason about that: cycle inventory with discounts, risk pooling across locations, contracts that align incentives between independent firms, and the bullwhip effect that emerges when each stage acts on its own information. You'll work through written midterms, six homework sets, and a case study applying these models to messier industry settings. It sits downstream of inventory and stochastic methods coursework and is where those tools finally meet the strategic question of who decides what across a multi-firm chain.