Search Site

BMRI Research seminar by Dr Florian Lücker, Cass Business School, London

The Business & Management Research Institute (BMRI) arranged a research seminar “Mitigating product shortages due to disruptions in multi-stage supply chains” presented by Dr Florian Lücker, Cass Business School, London. The seminar took place in Luton on 14^th September 2019.

Dr Lücker's research was motivated by disruptions faced by pharmaceutical supply chains. He developed an analytical model for managing supply chain disruption risk using inventory and reserve capacity in serial multi-stage supply chains but presented the seminar aimed at a general audience. The research problem was to determine the optimal risk mitigation inventories (RMI) and reserve capacities when product transformation occurs at each stage. Using the model, Florian showed that the downstream stage typically holds at least as much RMI as the upstream stage. At the same time, it is often optimal to hold additionally more reserve capacity downstream than upstream. These results hold under the assumption that inventory and reserve capacity holding costs are larger downstream than upstream.

The seminar was well attended by staff and research students.