We study periodic-review inventory replenishment problems with fixed ordering costs, and show the optimality of (s, S) inventory replenishment policies. Inventory replenishment is instantaneous, i.e., the lead time is zero. We consider several sales mechanisms, e.g., auction mechanisms, name-your-own-price mechanisms, and multiple heterogeneous sales channels. We prove this result by showing th...

In multi-item inventory with very large number of items in retail sale stores, purchase dependency in demand amongst the items can be described by association rules mined from sale transaction data. With the knowledge of association rules, inventory replenishment policy can be designed which will result in low inventory cost and better profitability. The relevant inventory costs include the cos...

Due to the rapid changes in circumstances of cooperates such as globalization, technical innovation and competition, inter-dependence among cooperates which compose supply chain has been intensified. This make cooperates be exposed to various risk and even a small uncertainty can disrupt the balance of whole supply chain. Therefore, in this paper, the framework to develop alternative backorder ...

We consider a problem of optimal grouping and provide conditions under which an optimal partition of an ordered set S = {r1, -*t , r,) consists of subsets of consecutive elements. We transform the problem into the problem of finding a shortest path on a directed acyclic graph with n + 1 vertices (for which efficient algorithms exist). These results may be used to solve the problem of grouping n...

On the basis of analyzing the shortages of present studies on multi-echelon inventory control, and considering some restrictions, this paper applies the joint replenishment strategy into the inventory system and builds a multi-product multi-echelon inventory control model. Then, an algorithm designed by Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used for solving the model. Finally, we respectively simulate the ...

We consider several subclasses of the problem of grouping n items (indexed 1, 2, .., n) into m subsets so as to minimize the function g(S 1 , .. , S,). In general, these problems are very difficult to solve to optimality, even for the case m = 2. We provide several sufficient conditions on g(') that guarantee that there is an optimum partition in which each subset consists of consecutive intege...

In this paper, we develop a mathematical programming approach for coordinating inventory and transportation decisions in an inbound commodity collection system. In particular, we consider a system that consists of a set of geographically dispersed suppliers that manufacture one or more non-identical items, and a central warehouse that stocks these items. The warehouse faces a constant and deter...

A novel clustering algorithm is proposed and applied to the multi-item replenishment processing. This new algorithm has two distinguished features: non-binary hierarchical tree and the feature of overlapping clustering. A non-binary hierarchical tree is much smaller than the binary-trees constructed by most traditional algorithms and, therefore, it clearly highlights meaningful clusters which s...

Companies survive in saturated markets trying to be more productive and more efficient. In this context, to manage more accurately the finished goods inventories becomes critical for make to stock production systems companies. In this paper an inventory replenishment expert system with the objectives of improving quality service and reducing holding costs is proposed. The Inventory Replenishmen...

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...