Supply chain scheduling is a relatively new research area with less than 20 years of history. It is an intersection of two traditional areas: supply chain management and scheduling. In this book, the authors provide a comprehensive coverage of supply chain scheduling. The book covers applications, solution algorithms for solving related problems, evaluation of supply chain conflicts, and models for encouraging cooperation between decision makers. Supply chain scheduling studies detailed scheduling issues within supply chains, as motivated by a variety of applications in the real world. Topics covered by the book include: Coordinated decision making in centralized supply chains, including integrated production and distribution scheduling, joint scheduling and product pricing, and coordinated subcontracting and scheduling. Coordination and competition issues in decentralized supply chains, including conflict and cooperation within scheduling decisions made by different parties in supply chains, and both cooperative and noncooperative supply chain scheduling games. The book describes a variety of representative problems within each of these topics. The authors define these problems mathematically, describe corresponding applications, and introduce solution methods for solving each problem to improve supply chain performance.

Zhi-Long Chen is Orkand Corporation Professor of Management Science at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. His research interests include supply chain scheduling, logistics and transportation operations, and dynamic pricing. His main teaching interest is in operations management, supply chain management, and integer programming. Nicholas G. Hall is Berry Professor of Operations Management at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. His research interests are in operational supply chain issues, especially scheduling and project management, and in applications of operations research to sports and public policy problems. His main teaching interest is in project management.