Despite significant achievements, the discipline of supply chain
management is still unable to satisfactorily handle many practical
real-world challenges. The authors of Networks Against Time claim that a
unified supply chain network analytics framework is needed which should
be able to handle optimization and competitive behavior while also
maintain relevance to many industrial sectors in which perishable
products are prominent, from healthcare to food and from fashion apparel
to technology. This Brief provides a wide range of critical supply chain
problems which are modeled as generalized networks. Guidelines are
provided to determine the arc multipliers that capture perish ability of
the product whether food, radioisotopes, or even highly perishable blood
in healthcare over space and time. Through case studies the authors
portray the application of the models and algorithms to real-world
sectors which illustrate the power of the framework in practice. The
models and algorithms are fully described along with the input and
output data in the case studies. This level of transparency is useful
pedagogically as well as for future research and for applications in
practice. Researchers and practitioners in mathematics, in operations
research and management science, operations management, as well as in
economics and computer science will find this book useful to gain a
broader appreciation of the richness of network supply chain structures,
processes, and applications. This book can also be used by advanced
undergraduate students and graduate students in the disciplines noted
above to familiarize themselves with methodologies and supply chain
network models and applications.
