Modeling the Supply Chain

As global markets become increasingly competitive, companies have begun to realize the value of analyzing their supply chain. Modeling and optimizing across the entire set of processes from raw materials to the customer can offer tremendous potential to lower costs, increase efficiency, and boost profits. The textbook Modeling the Supply Chain, by Jeremy Shapiro, can help managers and students learn how to effectively build and apply models to their supply chain problems.

The text covers modeling supply chain problems at strategic, tactical, and operational levels of planning and includes a comprehensive discussion of the role of data, models, and modeling systems in the management of supply chains. "Linear Programming models, and methods of optimizing them, play a central role in all types of supply chain application," reports Shapiro. A primary focus of the text is on optimization models based on linear and mixed integer programming.

A number of practical What'sBest! examples for production, transporta-tion, and inventory planning problems are discussed in the text. "What'sBest! was a valuable tool in researching and writing my book," says Shapiro, "The modeling of a range of illustrative supply chain applications was easy and intuitive. What'sBest! reports also helped me debug misconceived models. The linear and mixed integer optimizers worked flawlessly."

In addition to the book's discussion, a companion web site (www.scm-models.com) contains modeling exercises involving data files and a link to download the trial version of What'sBest!. Also on the web site are discussion questions, white papers, and links to other web sites organized by chapters in the text where appropriate.

Modeling the Supply Chain, by Jeremy Shapiro, is published by Duxbury (ISBN 0-534-37363-1).

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