Arguably the central problem in operations research and management science (OR/MS) addressed by e-Business is better coordination of supply and de mand, including price discovery and reduction of transactions costs of buyer seller interactions. In capital-intensive industries like chemicals and steel, the out-of-pocket costs of excess capacity and the opportunity costs of underuti lized capacity have been important factors driving the growth of exchanges for improving demand and supply coordination through e-Business platforms. Stefan Spinler addresses in his dissertation one of the most...

This work was stimulated by a comment made by a former student (Prof. Alan Erera of Georgia Tech) in connection with an inventory stabil ity game he was going to play in one of his logistics classes. This was the well-known "beer-game" that is often played in business schools to illus trate the "bullwhip" effect in supply chains. Al had said to me that he did not have to tell his students how to reorder replacement parts from the other members of the supply chain because he knew from experience that the order sizes the players would generate as the game progressed would become chaotic anyhow....