Abstract
This quote illustrates an important decision many businesses face: Which customers to serve in times when supplies are low? In practice, many companies encounter this allocation problem on a regular basis, not just when planning the introduction of a new product.
Taking a more general perspective, allocation decisions are ubiquitous in business environments. Examples include capital budgeting (Maier and van der Weide, 1976), marketing resource allocations (Mantrala et al., 1992), capacity allotment (Mallik and Harker, 2004) or inventory allocation decisions (Federgruen and Zipkin, 1984). To put it plainly, the problem of optimally matching the supply of scarce supplies with customer demand is at the heart of most supply chain management (SCM) initiatives.
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© 2014 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
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Vogel, S. (2014). Introduction. In: Demand Fulfillment in Multi-Stage Customer Hierarchies. Produktion und Logistik. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-02864-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-02864-0_1
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Publisher Name: Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden
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Online ISBN: 978-3-658-02864-0
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