Optimal inventory model for managing demand-supply mismatches for perishables with stochastic supply

While festivals bring a reason to cheer for everyone, businesses dealing with a spike in demand for perishables may have to live with the misery of lost sales and/or expired items. In the case of the dairy industry that deals with liquid milk, both raw material, and finished goods are perishable, which implies that merely stockpiling inventory of either item, without paying attention to potential inventory losses, cannot be an optimal strategy. In developing countries, the supplier base for perishables like milk, fruits, vegetables, flowers, etc. mostly comprise of small farmers instead of corporate/professional agencies, thus leading to supply variability. During special occasions like festivals, as individuals set aside more of the raw material for their own consumption, we encounter a reduction in supply. Around the same time, we notice a spike in customer demand, leading to a demand-supply mismatch. Companies dealing with perishables need an analytical approach to manage this.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Supply Chain Management Program

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• lyer Nurani, Vishwanathan Parameshwaran.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nima Kazemi.

• Supply Chain Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122255

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122255