This paper examines the inventories of publicly traded U.S. retail and wholesale companies between 1981 and 2004. First, we document that inventory holdings have been reduced. The median of wholesale inventory holding periods was reduced from 73 days to 49 days. Retail inventory did not start to decline until about 1995. Second, we document that firms with abnormally high inventories have abnormally poor long-term stock returns. Third, we illustrate these effects for the cases of Wal-Mart, 7-Eleven (Japan), and some related firms.inventory, retail, wholesale, stock returns, empirical analysis

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Cyber-Physical System (CPS), a new generation of digital system, mainly focuses on complex interdependencies and integration between cyberspace and physical world. A CPS is composed of highly-integrated computation, communication, control, and physical elements. CPS is currently of interest in academia, industry, and government. However, a systematic and extensive review of research on CPS is not available. As such, this paper conducts an expanded literature review on applications of CPS by examining existing literatures from 2012 to 2017 in Scopus database. Specifically, 77 papers studying applications of CPS are grouped into 10 categories and reviewed. The contents of the papers in each research category are summarized. The challenges and trends of research on CPS are illustrated as well.

Cannibalisation is a major concern for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) when they outsource remanufacturing operations to third-party remanufacturers (3PRs). In dealing with the cannibalisation from the 3PRs, many OEMs (such as Sun, Apple, Hewlett Packard, Bosch Tools, and Gateway) use core collecting or remanufactured product remarketing. Motivated by examples from industry, we have developed two models in which an OEM produces new products but outsources remanufacturing operations to a 3PR. The two potential strategies for dealing with the cannibalisation from remanufactured products are: (1) collecting used cores from consumers, or (2) remarketing all remanufactured products to consumers. Among other results, we have found the minimising cannibalisation problems do not equate with maximising profits.In particular, if the collection cost coefficient is not pronounced, the aggressive response by the OEM minimises the cannibalisation problems from the 3PR's remanufacturing.On the other hand, it induces lower profitability for the OEM in Model C. Further, as the collection cost coefficient is moderate, remarketing remanufactured products can secure Pareto improvements. As such, we suggest that practising managers combine the cannibalisation problems of remanufacturing with the costs of collecting used cores.

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