MIT-Zaragoza Speaker Series: Mario Monsreal

Mario Monsreal
Zaragoza Logistics Center

"Order Variability, its Manifestations and their Relationships"

Order variability in supply chain operations is one of the major concerns for the industry and researchers. This type of variability can have different manifestations: variations in order quantities (volume variability), variations in the intervals between consecutive orders (time variability) and the variability of the nonnegative orders received daily (daily orders variability). It is clear that daily ordering behavior is related to order size and frequency; however, the dimension and direction of these relations are not so clear. Nevertheless, these ordering variations and their relationships affect different operational decisions at upstream levels. In addition, ordering policies may affect order variability. And in turn, the demand distributions may affect ordering policies and variability relationships.

This research pursues to understand more clearly, through an empirical study, the relations between these types of order variability, their relation to ordering policies and how the demand distributions affect such relations.

(joint work with S. Kraiselburd and R. Oliva)