Most research on supply chain management deals with settings where firms do not voluntarily get rid of inventory in the system. Since voluntary inventory reductions are often observed in practice, in this paper, we propose a (multi-echelon) model where the firm can dispose of excess stock through sales in the secondary market at each stage in the supply chain. What are called nested echelon bas...

This paper reviews inventory models with multiple supply options and discusses their contribution to supply chain management. After discussing strategic aspects of supplier competition and the role of operational flexibility in global sourcing, inventory models which use several suppliers in order to avoid or reduce the effects of shortage situations are outlined. Further, related inventory pro...

A two-stage inventory system is considered where Poisson demand occurs at Stage 1, and Stage 1 replenishes its inventory from Stage 2, which in turn orders from an outside supplier with unlimited stock. Each shipment, either to Stage 2 or to Stage 1, incurs a fixed setup cost. Under the assumption that the supply leadtime at Stage 2 is zero, we characterize a simple heuristic policy whose long-...

This paper describes a two-phase simulation-based optimisation procedure that integrates the Genetic Algorithm and Response Surface-based Linear Search algorithm for developing optimal power-of-two replenishment policy in multi-echelon environment during the maturity phase of the life cycle of a product. The problem involves a search in high dimensional space with different ranges for decision ...

In supply chain networks, the flow of material occurs between various business entities such as suppliers, manufactures, distributors and retailers, which can be considered as the various echelons (levels) in a multi-echelon supply chain network. Spare parts supply chain management deals with optimizing stocking, purchasing, repairing and disposing activities of purchased parts and their compon...

This paper considers an inventory system responsible for repairable equipments located at several operational sites, each in different area. When a failure occurs at the operational site, spare parts are required. We analyze a multiple-supplier inventory system that includes an internal repair shop that offers several modes of repair with different repair times and an external supplier of spare...

The work described in the literature on inventory and supply chain management has advanced greatly over the last few decades and now covers many aspects and challenges of applied supply chain management. In this paper we describe an approach that combines many of these academic aspects in a practical way to manage the spare parts logistics at a German automobile manufacturer. The basic problem ...