T his paper studies echelon stock (R, nQ) policies in serial production/inventory systems with stochastic demand. We provide a recursive procedure to compute the steady state echelon inventory levels of the systems, which can be used to evaluate the long-run average holding and backorder costs as well as other performance measures. The procedure is based upon an observation of a relationship be...

In this paper, an inventory management framework and deterministic costs models within the context of this framework are structured for effective supply chain under deterministic and fuzzy environment. In this regard, we propose a bi-echelon multi-product supply chain in which a central manufacturing firm (lower echelon) with warehouse space limitation is fed through different suppliers (upper ...

Multi-echelon inventory systems are one of the most important and attractive areas in modelling supply chain management so that several researches and studies have been done about. In this paper, the total cost function of a two-echelon inventory system with central warehouse and many identical retailers controlled by continuous review inventory policy is estimated. We have assumed the demand i...

In this paper, we establish the convexity of important cost functions in a general class of multi-echelon inventory models. In particular, we first study an assembly system with a single finished product managed using an echelon order-up-to policy. We show that the shortage penalty cost over any horizon is jointly convex with respect to the base-stock levels and capacity levels. Our second resu...

We consider a single-item, periodic-review, serial, multi-echelon inventory system, with linear inventory holding and penalty costs. In order to facilitate shipment consolidation and capacity planning, we assume the system has implemented periodic batching: each stage is allowed to order at given equidistant times. Further, for each stage except the most downstream one, the reorder interval is ...

We study a multi-echelon joint inventory-location model that simultaneously determines the location of warehouses and inventory policies at the warehouses and retailers. The model is formulated as a nonlinear mixed-integer program, and is solved using a Lagrangian relaxation-based approach. The efficiency of the algorithm and benefits of integration are evaluated through a computational study.

We consider multi-echelon supply chains, typically consisting of retailer, distributor, manufacturer, etc. The inventory of each actor is subject to its own delay in delivery time, and each chooses its own inventory replenishment strategy. We model this interaction with a system of linear differential delay equations. When put in matrix form the system is triangular and we derive an exact solut...