This study extends a mathematical model that integrates the location, allocation, inventory replenishment and routing decisions simultaneously. To cope with inherent uncertainty of parameters, we implement a continuous-time Markov process and derive the performance measures of the system. Using the obtained results, the problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programing model (MINLP)...

Vendor managed inventory replenishment is a business practice in which vendors monitor their customers’ inventories, and decide when and how much inventory should be replenished. The inventory routing problem addresses the coordination of inventory management and transportation. It needs to be solved to design a strategy that realizes the potential savings in inventory and transportation costs ...

We study the classical multistage lot sizing problem that arises in distribution and inventory systems. A celebrated result in this area is the 94% and 98% approximation guarantee provided by power-of-two policies. In this paper, we propose a simple randomized rounding algorithm to establish these performance bounds. We use this new technique to extend several results for the capacitated lot si...

Abstract The model describes an EOQ model with time-varying deterioration, partial backlogging which depends on the length of the waiting time for the next replenishment, linearly time-varying demand function over a finite time horizon and variable replenishment cycle. The model is solved analytically to obtain the optimal solution of the problem. It is illustrated with the help of a numerical ...

To solve joint replenishment problems (JRPs) effectively and efficiently which are typical NP-hard problems, an improved self-adaptive harmony search algorithm (ISHS) is designed. The proposed algorithm applies differential evolution mutation strategies to HS. Experimental results show that ISHS outperforms other start-of-art algorithms on both tested benchmark functions and typical JRPs.

In a recent paper, Murthy, Benton and Rubin (2003) discussed the problem of offsetting inventory replenishment cycles of several items in order to minimize the maximum required storage space. They analyzed the case where replenishment cycles are given integer multiples of a basic period and proposed a heuristic to solve the problem. While they provided a good analysis of the considered problem,...

In this paper we address the general multi-period production/inventory problem with non-stationary stochastic demand and supplier lead time under service-level constraints. A replenishment cycle policy (Rn,Sn) is modeled, where Rn is the n-th replenishment cycle length and Sn is the respective order-up-to-level. Initially we extend an existing formulation for this policy in a way to incorporate...

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