Production network, technology choice, capacity investment and inventory sourcing decisions: operational hedging under demand uncertainty

Our research is motivated by capacity investment and inventory sourcing decisions that firms make while investing in multi-plant production facilities to offer products and services to the markets. We study the strategic choice between investing alternative technologies in a production network and examine for conditions under which flexible technology to be chosen over dedicated technology and vice-versa. We model a firm’s technology choice, capacity investment, and inventory sourcing decisions in face of demand uncertainty as a two-stage stochastic optimization problem for a production network. We conduct numerical studies to examine a situation under which flexible technology to be chosen over dedicated technology in a production network. We observe that optimal amount of capacity to be acquired in a production network with flexible technology is less compared to a network with dedicated technologies. However, optimal levels of inventories to be sourced in a production network with flexible technology is more compared to a network with dedicated technologies. We show that a production network with flexible technology can hedge against demand uncertainty using operational measures such as extra inventory and flexible capacity; in case products demand is either negatively or positively correlated then the value of investing in flexible technology in a production network diminishes.