Abstract
The book describes strategies of matching supply with demand in the field of operations management. The objective function of enterprises is to minimize costs or maximize benefits. Enterprises keep the balance between the its revenue and the net utility of consumers’ purchasing products，the comprehensiveness and accuracy of demand forecasting，the risk and benefit，the holding cost and setup，coordination and confliction among supply chain members，dynamic pricing and capacity allocating，and dynamically adjusting the supply and demand. The equilibrium of balancing is that the supply of products or services could dynamically matches with the demand.
This book contains six fronts.
The first front starts with looking at consumers’ utility，from cognition to satisfaction. As an ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu said，“Know yourself and know your enemy，you will win every war.” Firstly，as some consumers take advantage of firms’ promotions，firms have to attempt to capture the hearts of the consumers by using coupons，friends’ recommendations，and other promotions. Secondly，consumers may hope to obtain security through their kindness during consumption，which can be used to stimulate consumers’ purchasing desire by firms. Lastly，firms can implement penetration price strategy by taking advantage of social media to attract more consumers.
Chapter 2 focuses on demand management，from understanding to enhancing demand management. As everything in life is impermanent，uncertain demand in the market is frequently a biggest headache for firms. To be competitive in the market，any firm wants to be a prophet who knows all known or unknown things[1]. Firstly，they could have a big picture on the overall demand by using either time series forecast or causal forecast method. Then，firms can collect consumers’ consumption and behavior data through social media. These data can facilitate firms to differentiate and segment consumers with different prices by legally using the dynamic pricing strategy. Lastly，enterprises could strategically increase demand by adjusting the levels of inventory and sales，and other operational indicators.
Chapter 3 discusses the ordering management，based on the analysis of costs and benefits. Any expected risk is not a risk. First of all，with the help of the Newsvendor model （the traditional model in operations management），this front analyzes the firms’ cognition in ordering related costs and their order decisions when facing the uncertain demand. Furthermore，the firms’ strategies that use flexible ordering and price adjustment in dealing with the risk of uncertain demand are also analyzed in this front.
Chapter 4 focuses on production management，by taking the consideration of batch sizing. A manufacturing giant does not necessarily mean a powerful manufacturing. From specialized production to JIT production，the management philosophy has been innovated continuously. This allows me to look back those classic production management theories，including Economic Production Lot （EPL），Basic Stock Policy，and （s，S） Stock Policy etc. What are tradeoffs in these classic production management theories and why does their charm last so long？
As Chapter 5 demonstrated，supply chain management needs to consider conflicts and coordination among members. The cooperation in competition results from reciprocity. Firms do not always cooperate and need some external forces to promote the cooperation. Therefore，exploring the decision makers’ cooperative behavior contributes to a better understanding in the relationship among members in a supply chain. This front first shows how firms can design different types of coordination contracts and procurement strategies to deal with the right and responsibility in sharing the risk due to uncertainty. Secondly，this front discusses how should firms design their distribution channels to increase sales and mitigate double marginalization.
Chapter 6 discusses the supply-demand matching management from the perspective of revenue management and platform operations. This front starts with analyzing the pricing and capacity allocation problems in airline industry，one of traditional applications of revenue management. Then the bicycle sharing industry is used to further reveal the trade-off strategy in using revenue management. Finally，the online car-hailing industry is explored and the tradeoff of online car-hailing companies in matching demand with supply is studied，when its capacity can be adjusted.
It is advised to stop reading when readers find the book is boring； otherwise，there is a mismatch between the expected benefits of reading this book and the opportunity costs.
[1]“To know and yet（think）we do not know is the high est（attainment）；not to know（and yet think）we do know is a disease”is from “Tao Te Ching”by Lao-tzu. It means that it is good that you know what you still have a lot of things you don’t know，but bad when you think you know but actually not. People tend to underestimate what they don’t understand and show overconfidence. People’s overconfidence is partly because of the lack of consideration of unknown information. Therefore，one should not only focus on the possible outcomes，but also consider the unexpected unknown factors（Walters et al.，2016）.