Cooperative Lot Sizing Games in Supply Chains

Thisbookresultsfrommyworkasaresearchassistant attheUniversitiesofFreiberg and Duisburg-Essen. Starting this research was very challenging due to the highly mathematically coined literature regarding game theoretical topics. The literature shows that cooperativegame theory is well studied from a theoretical point of view, but that ?elds of application are fairly limited up to now. Hence, the following researchquestion arose: What can be doneto make conceptsfrom cooperativegame theory more applicable to practical problems? The ?eld of supply chain management is predestined for many kinds of co- eration because companies will be more successful if they consider relationships to suppliers, customers, and/or competitors. Therefore, this work focuses on co- erations in supply networks (horizontal and vertical cooperation) concerning joint ordering and/or joint production. Problems of ordering and production for single decision makers are well studied in operations research and are used as a basis to develop cooperative models that display situations of cooperative decision making. Being one of the most essential problems in cooperations, the allocation of joint pro?ts or costs is the fundamental question in cooperativegame theory and will be the basic question answered by this work as well. Inbothplacesofmy doctorialstudies,FreibergandDuisburg,I hadvaluables- port without which this work would not have been possible. First of all, I thank Alf Kimms for providingme the chance to work on this topic, his guidance,challenging discussions, and the possibility to continue my work in Duisburg.