We study an integrated supply chain design problem that determines the locations of retailers and the assignments of customers to retailers in order to minimize the expected costs of location, transportation, and inventory. The system is subject to random supply disruptions that may occur at either the supplier or the retailers. Analytical and numerical studies reveal the effects of these disru...

This study considers a supply chain that consists of n retailers, each of them facing a newsvendor problem, and a supplier. Groups of retailers might increase their expected joint profit by joint ordering and inventory centralization. However, we assume that the retailers impose some level of stock that should be dedicated to them. In this situation, we show that the associated cooperative game...

This paper demonstrates that an important role of intermediaries in supply chains is to reduce the ®nancial risk faced by retailers. It is well known that risk averse retailers when faced by the classical single-period inventory (newsvendor) problem will order less than the expected value maximizing (newsboy) quantity. We show that in such situations a risk neutral distributor can o€er a menu o...

We propose a new method for making the inventory replenishment decisions in distribution systems. In particular, we consider distribution systems consisting of multiple retailers that face random demand and a warehouse that supplies the retailers. The method that we propose is based on formulating the distribution problem as a dynamic program and relaxing the constraints that ensure the nonnega...

This paper presents a two-echelon non-repairable spare parts inventory system that consists of one warehouse and m identical retailers and implements the reorder point, order quantity (R, Q) inventory policy. We formulate the policy decision problem in order to minimize the total annual inventory investment subject to average annual ordering frequency and expected number of backorder constraint...

We study an Inventory Routing Problem in which the supplier has a limited production capacity and the stochastic demand of the retailers is satisfied with procurement of transportation services. The aim is to minimize the total expected cost over a planning horizon, given by the sum of the inventory cost at the supplier, the inventory cost at the retailers, the penalty cost for stock-out at the...

In this paper, we consider a supply chain model consisting of a single product, one supplier and multiple retailers. Demand at the retailers is random, but stationary. Each retailer places her orders to the supplier according to the well known (Q,R) policy. We assume that the supplier has on-line information about the demand as well as inventory activities of the product at each retailer and em...

We consider a periodic-review inventory system with one warehouse and N non-identical retailers. Each location replenishes inventory according to a base-stock policy in a fixed time interval. A fixed cost is incurred for each inventory reorder. The warehouse fills the retailers’ orders in the same sequence as the original demand. The objective is to minimize the long-run average system cost per...

This paper introduces an integrated approach for solving the Period Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Delivery and Pickup (PVRPSDP). The problem considers a dis tribution system consisting of a warehouse and many dispersed location retailers, where each of which having two type of demands to be delivered and collected, respectively. A fleet of capacitated vehicle is employed for deliver...