Supply chain engineering : models and applications Preface This book emphasizes a quantitative approach to solving problems related to designing and operating supply chains. Importantly though it is not so micro in its focus that the perspective on the larger business problems is lost nor is it so macro in its treatment of that business context that it fails to develop students appreciation for and skills to solve the tactical problems that must be addressed in effectively managing flows of goods in supply chains. Economists often speak of the need to understand first principles before one can understand and solve larger problems. We share that view and we have therefore structured the book to provide a grounding in the first principles relevant to the broad and challenging problem of managing a supply chain that spans the globe. We feel strongly that students of supply chain engineering are best served by first developing a solid understanding of and a quantitative toolkit for tactical decision making in areas such as demand forecasting inventory management and transportation management in both an intrafirm and firm to firm (dyadic) context before making any attempt to optimize the supply chain a task that is clearly much easier said than done or to optimize large swaths of any given supply chain. Still the idea of optimization is indeed prevalent throughout the book. This book is careful and deliberate in its approach to supply chain optimization. Indeed the perspective taken is one that is well known to engineers of all types namely the perspective of design. Engineers design things. Some engineers design discrete physical items and some design collections of items that operate together as systems