The Dynamic Transshipment Problem

We investigate the strategy of transshipments in a dynamic deterministic demand environment over a finite planning horizon. This is the first time that transshipments are examined in a dynamic or deterministic setting. We consider a system of two locations which replenish their stock from a single supplier, and where transshipments between the locations are possible. Our model includes fixed (possibly joint) and variable replenishment costs, fixed and variable transshipment costs, as well as holding costs for each location and transshipment costs between locations. The problem is to determine how much to replenish and how much to transship each period; thus this work can be viewed as a synthesis of transshipment problems in a static stochastic setting and multilocation dynamic deterministic lot sizing problems. We provide interesting structural properties of optimal policies which enhance our understanding of the important issues which motivate transshipments and allow us to develop an efficient polynomial time algorithm for obtaining the optimal strategy. By exploring the reasons for using transshipments, we enable practitioners to envision the sources of savings from using this strategy and therefore motivate them to incorporate it into their replenishment strategies. c © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 48: 386–408, 2001