Applications and opportunities for operations research in Internet-enabled supply chains and electronic marketplaces

The Internet is creating opportunities to apply optimization. Firms can use operations research (OR) to improve their supply-chain performance within the enterprise whether their supply chains are being Internet-enabled or not. They can increase benefits by using OR to improve planning and execution in Internet-enabled supply chains with an expanded physical scope that includes vendors and customers and with an expanded functional scope that includes product design, marketing, and customer-relationship management.