This course covers three planning hierarchies: tactic and operational planning problems in inventory management, and strategic network planning.  It focuses on identifying problem types and finding the most relevant information in the problems in order to formulate the problems to assist decision making. Students are exposed to concepts and models important in inventory planning with emphasis on key trade-offs and phenomena. The following topics are discussed:

• Single-period inventory modeling: Newsvendor framework
• Two extensions of Newsvendor
  • Reactive capacity (dual sourcing model)
  • Supply chain coordination 
• Multi-period inventory modeling
  • Periodic review and base stock policy
  • Continuous review and fix order quantity policy
• Inventory Pooling effects
• Strategic network design

After completion of this course the students are expected to be able to:

• Understand the inventory planning systems, modeling approaches, and trade-offs among parameters and how they affect the decisions
• Derive and formulate the given inventory-related problems for different scenarios
• Interpret results, draw conclusion, and give managerial insight 

Attendance is required and evaluated per class. Absence with valid reason is permitted

Lectures, Assignments, Short-Cases

In total, 100 points can be reached. They assemble as follows:

• In-class assignments - 12 points (individual)
• Home assignments - 39 points (group, max. 2 persons)
• Final exam - 49 points (individual)

At the final exam a minimum of 20 points has to be reached in order to pass the course.

• Excellent (1) from 90
• Good (2) from 80
• Satisfactory (3) from 70
• Sufficient (4) from 60

Please check the slides for further details!

According to §3, paragraph 9 of WU's "Examination Guideline" the following rule applies:

If a student does not attend the first session of this course (ill-founded and without written notice of his/her absence), he/she will be signed off from this course. The next attending student on the waiting list receives the now available place. 

It is not possible to increase the number of participating students over the maximum capacity.  

Basic statistics knowledge