A Note on “Sourcing Decisions with Stochastic Supplier Reliability and Stochastic Demand”
指出Burke等人研究中的目标函数仅为期望利润的下界，并给出了正确表达式；通过数值实例证明其订购策略与最优策略存在显著差异，最后总结了该解次优性的定性见解。
This note complements the study of Burke, Carillo, and Vakharia ( 2009 hereafter “BCV”) which analyzes a class of single‐product multisourcing problems under stochastic demand and random yields. The purpose is twofold. First, we prove that the objective function used by these authors is only a lower bound for the expected profit for which we provide the correct expression. Second, we show on some of the numerical instances provided in BCV's study that the structure and the performance of the BCV ordering policy may be substantially different from the optimal ordering policy. We conclude by giving general qualitative insights characterizing suboptimality of the BCV solution.