Production and Operations Management

Elwood Buffa's Pioneering Contributions to Production and Operations Management

Elwood Spencer Buffa, a pioneer in production and operations management (P/OM), passed away in the summer of 2005, leaving his legacy behind. During his academic career Buffa made lasting contributions to teaching and research of P/OM. We review those contributions and their impact on the evolution of the P/OM discipline.

Elaborating the Contingency Theory of Organizations: The Case of Manufacturing Flexibility Strategies

What determines which manufacturing flexibility strategies are feasible and which are not? In this paper, I build both theoretical and empirical understanding of task-environmental contingencies that may either enable or constrain the selection of various flexibility strategies. The special emphasis is on the various plant-level actions that are used to seek manufacturing flexibility. Demand uncertainty and variability, technology, and competitive strategy emerge as the most important conting...

Impact of Price Postponement On Capacity and Flexibility Investment Decisions

Investments in dedicated and flexible capacity have traditionally been based on demand forecasts obtained under the assumption of a predetermined product price. However, the impact on revenue of poor capacity and flexibility decisions can be mitigated by appropriately changing prices. While investment decisions need to be made years before demand is realized, pricing decisions can easily be postponed until product launch, when more accurate demand information is available. We study the effect...

Stochastic Optimal Control for Staffing and Backlog Policies in a Two-Stage Customized Service Supply Chain

Motivated by an oilfield services industry case study, we investigate the dynamic behavior of customized service supply chains by developing a two-stage serial staffing model. Each stage holds no finished goods inventory, but rather only backlogs that can be managed by adjusting staffing levels. We develop optimal control policies to balance backlog costs against hiring and firing personnel costs-assuming shared backlog information-under both centralized and decentralized control. We examine ...