A novel approach toward coordinated inventory management of an agile multi-echelon multi-product supply chain

Abstract: Inventory control systems development is one of the most appealing issues of the supply chain management which have recently been studied by academicians and practitioners. In this paper, an inventory management framework and deterministic cost models within the context of this framework are structured for effective supply chain (SC) in an agile environment. To do so, we propose a three-echelon multiproduct SC including multiple suppliers, multiple manufacturing firms, and multiple retailers. Moreover, a fuzzy-ANP framework is employed to evaluate suppliers’ agility level and to elicit suitable suppliers aiming at achieving an agile network. To develop operational measures of SC flexibility, a cost structure is defined which captures some different operational cost factors including inventory holding, backordering, lost sell, and ordering costs. Furthermore, a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm is developed to tackle the computational complexity of a production-inventory planning task. Finally, numerical experiments validate the proposed solution methodology.