International Business Machines Corporation

Daniel Patrick Connors

Markus Ettl

David D Yao

Zhengliang Xue

Thomas Robert Ervolina

Feng Cheng

Ramesh Srinivasan

Laura Wynter

Ramesh Natarajan

Kumar Bhaskaran

Shubir Kapoor

Yehuda Naveh

Fenno F Heath, Iii

Mary Elizabeth Helander

Stuart A Siegel

Ching-Hua Chen-Ritzo

Yossi Richter

Donna Leigh Gresh

Nitin R Nayak

Lin Li

Joint pricing and replenishment of freshness inventory or products having different qualities determines the joint pricing and inventory strategies to optimize the retailer's benefits from product freshness, employing a dynamic programming formulation that incorporates a demand model that captures consumer choice based on both the freshness and price.

Joint pricing and replenishment of freshness inventory

Freshness inventory control problem may be formulated as a stochastic dynamic program. In one aspect, a stochastic dynamic programming formulation takes as input inventory status, stochastic demand forecast and cost information associated with on-hand inventory. The stochastic dynamic programming formulation is maximized to determine order quantity and depletion quantity of the product per period.

Managing fresh-product inventory

There are provided a system, a method and a computer program product for tracking an inventory distribution of a perishable product in a supply chain. The system receives shipment data and point of sale data for the product from every location in the supply chain. The system creates, based on the obtained shipment data and the point of sale data, a network graph that represents a flow of the product in the supply chain. The system identifies an age of unsold inventory of the product at each node of the graph based on the created graph. The system provides a notification to a user at each location that informs the age of the unsold inventory of the product at that location.

Non-instrumented perishable product tracking in a supply chain

A system, method and computer program product provides for accurate demand modeling and forecasting in retail categories using retail sales data sets with missing data values, in order to enable a variety of retail decision-support applications.

Demand modeling in retail categories using retail sales data sets with missing data elements

A computer-implemented method for resource management includes storing in a memory a set of resource consumers, resources for allocation to the resource consumers, and initial binary constraints applying to the allocation of the resources. Respective variables are associated with the resource consumers, and the resources are identified as values applicable to the variables. A non-binary scoring criterion is applied to generate scores on a graded scale for proposed assignments of one or more of the resources to respective ones of the resource consumers. One or more additional binary constraints are defined based on the graded scale of the scores. An assignment is found of the values to the variables that satisfies the initial and additional binary constraints using a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) solver running on a processor that is coupled to the memory. The resources are assigned to the resource consumers responsively to the assignment of the values to the variables.

Extending constraint satisfaction problem solving

A method (and system) for contact center management contract evaluation including determining a potential profitability/risk for contact center management based upon a proposed contract term between one of a client and a service provider, and a service provider and a vendor.

Method and system for minimizing risk in contact center management contracts

An active collaboration technology in an open architectural framework that delivers information and decision support tools in a timely, contextual and role sensitive manner to present a collaborative dynamic decision making capability to a community of role players within a supply chain process. Such a comprehensive collaborative dynamic decision making capability is made possible through the integration of the business process, the organization of role players and relevant business applications.

Method and apparatus for collaboratively managing supply chains

A decision-making method suitable for production planning in an uncertain demand environment. To this end, the method comprises combining an implosion technology with a scenario-based analysis, thus manifesting, a sui generis capability which preserves the advantages and benefits of each of its subsumed aspects.

Method for production planning in an uncertain demand environment

An apparatus and method for configuring semiconductor jobs to achieve a desired level of set serviceability, in either probability or expectation, using a minimal number of wafers. The configuration problem is formulated as a mathematical optimization, where the serviceability level and yield losses, at chip, wafer and job levels, are explicitly considered. The problem is then reformulated by replacing the mathematically intractable service level constraints with tractable lower bounds. The reformulated mathematical optimization is efficiently solved using marginal allocation, giving good, feasible solutions to the original configuration program.

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Pleasant Valley, NY, United States of America

Daniel Patrick Connors