Professor Nagurney's Book Published

Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products was published this week by Springer Science+Business as part of its book series Springer Briefs in Optimization.
Supply chains provide the backbones for the production, transportation, and consumption of goods and services in our global economy. Paradoxically, many products and, hence, their supply chains, are increasingly time-sensitive -- from medicines that must be consumed on schedule and in good condition in order that healing and recovery take place, to fresh produce, fish, meat, milk, whose quality deteriorates over time, to healthcare products that require special storage conditions and may even decay over time. Time manifests itself in various forms in supply chain networks. Such activities as manufacturing, transportation, storage, and distribution to retailers and consumers have time directly associated with them. Time is also associated with the dynamics of adjustment processes. Firms must learn about their competitors' behavior as well as the consumers' preferences. Clearly, consumers are also time-sensitive when it comes to their purchases. Healthcare professionals require that medicines, vaccines, and radioisotopes be available when needed for treatments and diagnostics. Firms that delay production and delivery of products may lose not only sales but their reputation. Hence, the inclusion of time elements into supply chain analytics is critical, especially in today's global scenario in which not only are decision-makers personally pressed for time but the same holds for their organizational and business processes and products. We are now in an era of Networks Against Time, in which decision-makers, be they individuals, firms, or other organizations, who optimize and compete with and against time, will not only have the full advantages of the best allocation of their constrained resources, but will also achieve their desired objectives. This book provides a unified supply chain network analytics framework through generalized network models that capture perishability of products, the associated qualitative analysis, and algorithms for the computation of product flows, costs, prices, etc. The constructed models are further illustrated in case studies that reflect industrial sectors in which perishable products are prominent, from healthcare to food to fast fashion apparel to high technology. With this volume, we hope to have made a contribution that is also conducive to further advances in both research and practice.

The book was co-authored with Anna Nagurney and Amir Masoumi of UMass AMherst and Min Yu of University of Portland.