Networks Against Time : Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products

Despite significant achievements, thediscipline of supply chain management is still unable to satisfactorily handlemany practical real-world challenges. The authors of Networks AgainstTime claim that a unified supply chain network analytics framework isneeded which should be able to handle optimization and competitive behaviorwhile also maintain relevance to many industrial sectors in which perishableproducts are prominent, from healthcare to food and from fashion apparel totechnology. ThisBrief provides a wide range of critical supply chain problems which aremodeled as generalized networks. Guidelines are provided to determine the arcmultipliers that capture perish ability of the product whether food,radioisotopes, or even highly perishable blood in healthcare over space andtime. Through case studies the authors portray the application of the modelsand algorithms to real-world sectors which illustrate the power of theframework in practice. The models and algorithms are fully described along withthe input and output data in the case studies. This level of transparency isuseful pedagogically as well as for future research and for applications inpractice. Researchersand practitioners in mathematics, in operations research and managementscience, operations management, as well as in economics and computer sciencewill find this book useful to gain a broader appreciation of the richness ofnetwork supply chain structures, processes, and applications. This book canalso be used by advanced undergraduate students and graduate students in thedisciplines noted above to familiarize themselves with methodologies and supplychain network models and applications.