ABSTRACT In this paper, we develop a supply network model for a service facility system with perishable inventory (on hand) by considering a two dimensional stochastic process of the form (L, X) =   0 )); ( ), ( (  t t X t L , where L (t) is the level of the on hand inventory and X (t) is the number of customers at time t. The inter-arrival time to the service station is assumed to be expone...

Food as perishable goods represents a specific and sensitive part in the supply chain theory, since changing physical or chemical characteristics considerably influence the approach to stock management. The most delicate phase of this process is transportation, where it becomes difficult to ensure the stable conditions which limit deterioration, since the value of the deterioration rate could b...

This paper examines a dynamic version of the newsboy problem in which a decision maker must maintain service capacity from several sources to attempt to meet uncertain demand for a perishable good, subject to the cost of providing sufficient capacity, and penalties for not meeting demand. A complete characterization of the optimal outcome is obtained when normalized demand is modeled as Brownia...

This paper highlights the potentialities of Data Envelopment Analysis to evaluate the performance of organisations, using the concept of super-efficiency-an extension of DEA which increases its performance-and presents an example from the public sector to illustrate the method. The example selected is that of a school network where a place in a school can be seen as a perishable good, as places...

Generalising the idea of the classical EM algorithm that is widely used for computing maximum likelihood estimates, we propose an EM-Control (EM-C) algorithm for solving multi-period finite time horizon stochastic control problems. The new algorithm sequentially updates the control policies in each time period using Monte Carlo simulation in a forward-backward manner; in other words, the algori...

We consider a service facility system with perishable inventory with finite number of servers. Each server having one perishable item for providing service. The arrival of a customer at the system according to independent Poisson Processes with rate  through a single channel. The service time of the customer is exponentially distributed with mean  1/ and the item in stock has exponential life...

Nowadays, many distribution networks deal with the distribution and storage of perishable products. However, distribution network design models are largely based on assumptions that do not consider time limitations for the storage of products within the network. This study develops a model for the design of a distribution network that considers the short lifetime of perishable products. The mod...

Path-relinking has helped solving deterministic problems by exploring the neighbourhood of elite solutions in an intelligent way. We present an algorithm that combines a mixed-integer linear solver with a truncated pathrelinking method in order to solve two-stage stochastic integer problems with complete recourse and first-stage integer variables. This method takes advantage of a possible scena...