This paper considers a two-echelon capacitated supply chain with two non-identical retailers and information sharing. We characterize the optimal inventory policies. We also study the benefits of the optimal stock rationing policy over the first come first served (FCFS) and the modified echelon-stock rationing (MESR) policies. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Managing inventory in distribution systems involves taking decisions on the quantity of inventory to be placed at different stages so that a desired customer service level can be achieved at minimum cost. In this paper, we present the case of the distribution system of an Indian FMCG company, which despite having centralized control takes replenishment decisions based on local stock information...

Wepresent a new proof of the optimality of echelon order-up-to policies in serial inventory systems, first proved by Clark and Scarf. Our proof is based on a sample-path analysis as opposed to the original proof based on dynamic programming induction. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper analyzes a series inventory system with stationary costs and stochastic demand over an infinite horizon. A distinctive feature is that demand can be negative, representing returns from customers, as well as zero or positive. We observe that, as in a system with nonnegative demand, a stationary echelon base-stock policy is optimal here. However, the steadystate behavior of the system ...

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 ...

We study a two echelon supply chain with AR(1) demand and unit replenishment lead-times. Each echelon of the supply chain uses conditional expectation to generate MMSE forecasts. Both echelons use these forecasts inside the “Order-Up-To” policy to generate replenishment orders. We investigate 3 different scenarios: The first is when each echelon aims to minimize their own inventory holding and ...

Lateral transshipments within an inventory system are stock movements between locations of the same echelon. These transshipments can be conducted periodically at predetermined points in time to proactively redistribute stock, or they can be used reactively as a method of meeting demand which cannot be satisfied from stock on hand. The elements of an inventory system considered, e.g. size, cost...

In many production=distribution systems, materials !ow from one stage to another in %xed lot sizes. For example, a retailer orders a full truckload from a manufacturer to qualify for a quantity discount; a factory has a material handling system that moves full containers of parts from one production stage to the next. In this paper, we derive optimal policies for multi-stage serial and assembly...