Surplus inventory matching

Kalagnanam, J., Dawande, M., Trumbo, M., and Lee, H. The Surplus Inventory Matching Problem in the Process Industry. Operations Research, 48(4) 505-516, July 2000. 

A typical problem in the steel industry concerns the allocation of orders to leftover surplus stock ([71]). The problem of matching unique customer requirements to existing inventory is termed the surplus inventory matching problem. The surplus stock arises because orders maybe canceled after units are produced, because produced units are below acceptable quality levels, or because surplus units had been intentionally created to reduce customer lead times. While this problem is described from the context of steel mills and paper mills, the problem can be framed in a more general form, e.g., as dealing with leftover trucking capacity or production capacity. 

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