We study the optimal integrated production/inventory policy in a two-echelon supply chain with one manufacturer and one retailer. The manufacturer produces items in her production facility and keeps the Þnished goods in inventory. The manufacturer’s production facility deteriorates with usage and is subject to failure. Under the assumption that the manufacturer has on-line access to the retaile...

Customers and downstream supply chain partners often place, or can be induced to place, orders in advance of future requirements. We show how to optimally incorporate advance demand information into periodic-review, multiechelon, inventory systems in series. While the state space for series systems appears to be formidably large, we decompose the problem across locations, as in Clark and Scarf ...

We study an infinite-horizon, N -stage, serial production/inventory system with two transportation modes between stages: regular shipping and expedited shipping. The optimal inventory policy for this system is a top–down echelon base-stock policy, which can be computed through minimizing 2N nested convex functions recursively (Lawson and Porteus, Oper Res 48 (2000), 878–893). In this article, w...

In the book “Optimal inventory modeling of systems: multi-echelon techniques” the author Craig Sherbrooke, who has developed several important model in this area, describes a part of the model cosidered in this manuscript as follows (in “aircraft language”): “When a malfunction is diagnosed on an aircraft, the malfuncioning item is removed from the aircraft and brought into base supply. If a sp...

In this paper we impose a capacity restriction on a multi-echelon joint location-inventory model. The setting is that of a single product manufacturer distributing its product to a number of warehouses, each of which is assigned to a number of retailers. There is no lateral supply between warehouses and they do not share retailers. The model simultaneously makes decisions on location and invent...

This paper considers a two-echelon distribution system which consists of a single warehouse serving N (possibly non-identical) retailers that face discrete stochastic demand of the customers. The warehouse orders from an exogenous supplier with ample stock. Orders arrive at the warehouse after a fixed leadtime. The warehouse satisfies, if possible, the replenishment requests from the retailers....

Reinforcement learning (RL) appeals to many researchers in recent years because of its generality. It is an approach to machine intelligence that learns to achieve the given goal by trial-and-error iterations with its environment. This paper proposes a case-based reinforcement learning algorithm (CRL) for dynamic inventory control in a multi-agent supply-chain system. Traditional time-triggered...

With the increasing complexities in supply chains and increasing global trade, integrated supply chain network design is utilized by the firms in order to reduce the overall cost while meeting the customer demand with requisite levels of service. This view of collaborative approach towards supply chain design has the potential of providing competitive edge for the firms in a highly competitive ...

In this article we present an effective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation for design of a multi-echelon stochastic inventory system with uncertain customer demands. In You and Grossmann [2010] a three-echelon supply chain with inventories under uncertainty is presented. In that supply chain, the location of the plants and the customer demand zones (CDZ) are known. Potential di...

This paper examines the effect that product pricing has on the dynamics and variability of a supply chain, with a focus in retail inventory. Pricing policies and strategies and the impacts of prices on demand and inventories within the retail supply chain environment are reviewed. Recent pricing and markdown research is examined. An example model is presented that is stochastic and uses simulat...