1. Introduction Nichalin S. Summerfield Ph.D. Candidate in Management (Operations Management), Expected December 2010. Dissertation Title: Games of Decentralized Inventory Management Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Moshe Dror Minor: Economics Research Interests: Game Theory (Cooperative and Non-cooperative Game) Operations Management (Supply chain and inventory management)

2. Games of Decentralized Inventory Management

3. The 1 st chapter: Prelim exam paper Influential paper: Anupindi, R., Y. Bassok, E. Zemel. 2001. “A general framework for the study of decentralized distribution systems,” Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 4(3) 349-368. –Cited: 125 times as of today according to Google Scholar –This paper proposes a profit sharing mechanism that is fair if all retailers are rational and play Nash equilibrium strategy. –Problems: Is there a unique Nash equilibrium? Will retailers always play Nash? My prelim exam paper answered these problems. Suakkaphong, N. and Dror, M. (2010) “Managing Decentralized Inventory and Transshipment,” TOP – Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, (in press).

4. The 2 nd chapter: Oral exam paper The setting as described in Anupindi et al. (2001) is too restricted. A minor change in the setting can change the game, the model and the result. Problems: What are the settings that have been studied? Is there a general framework that can be used? My oral exam paper addresses these. Suakkaphong, N. and Dror, M. (2010) “Stochastic Programming Framework for Decentralized Inventory with Transshipment,” (In revision)

5. Taxonomy of Decentralized Inventory Games with Transshipment Prelim exam paper The 3 rd paper

6. The 3 rd chapter: In progress Suakkaphong, N. and Dror, M. (2010) “Biform Game: Reflection as a Stochastic Programming Problem,” (in progress) –Expands beyond decentralized inventory games –Based on another influential paper Brandenburger, A., H. W. Stuart Jr. 2007. “Biform games,” Management Science 53(4) 537-549.

7. Q & A Developing each work –Discuss with my advisor to get an idea –Read a lot of papers –Pose a lot of questions and try to answer them myself Most required mathematical modeling and numerical examples. –Write them down What resources did you need and how did you get them? –Books from library –Journal papers from Google Scholar (MS, OR, MSOM, etc.) –Software: Latex –Talk to experts: Dr. Moshe Dror (MIS), Dr. Guzin Bayraksan (SIE), and Dr. Rabah Amir (Economics) –$$$ for attending conferences from GPSC