We study a multi-item, two-echelon, continuous-review inventory problem at a Dutch utility company, Liander. We develop a model that optimizes the quantities of service parts and their allocation in the two-echelon network under an aggregate waiting time restriction. Specific aspects that we address are emergency shipments in case of stockout, and batching for regular replenishment orders at th...

Multi-echelon distribution systems are quite common in supply-chain and logistic management. They are used by public administrations in their transportation and traffic planning strategies as well as by companies to model their distribution systems. In the literature, most studies address issues related to the movement of flows throughout the system from the origins to their final destinations....

In this study we use a flexible policy of spare part management in the context of airports corrective maintenance activities and provide a new approach for mathematically evaluate the performances of systems with lateral transshipments in case of one-for-one ordering policies, transfer times and peaked demand. This study deals with the spare optimization of a large logistics company, in charge ...

In today’s dynamic market numerous dynamic influencing factors have seriously aggravates the difficulties of inventory planning of the complex distribution networks. This paper proposes a simulation-based hybrid approach for the optimization of the inventory policies in complex distribution networks. The initial multi-echelon inventory policies are handed over to a simulation model, which is ca...

Facility location problems form an important class of integer programming problems, with applications in the telecommunication, distribution and transportation industries. In this paper we are concerned with a particular type of facility location problem in which there exist two echelons of facilities. Each facility in the second echelon has limited capacity and can be supplied by only one faci...

C often face nonstationary demand due to product life cycles and seasonality, and nonstationary demand complicates supply chain managers’ inventory decisions. This paper proposes a simple heuristic for determining stocking levels in a serial inventory system. Unlike the exact optimization algorithm, the heuristic generates a near-optimal solution by solving a series of independent single-stage ...

In Multi-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problems the delivery from one or more depots to the customers is managed by routing and consolidating the freight through intermediate depots, called satellites. This family of problems differs from Multi-Echelon Distribution Systems present in the literature. In the latter the attention is focused on the flow assignment among the levels only, while we also con...

We consider customer response time minimization in a two-echelon supply chain system with stochastic demand where the first echelon consists of one production plant and the other of one retailer. Traditionally models of this type only seek to minimize traditional operating costs. However, because of the highly competitive nature of the market, it is also essential for the manufacturer to respon...

A stream is a continuous version of a supply chain. It is like a series inventory system, but stock can be held at any point along a continuum, not just at discrete stages. We assume stationary parameters and aim to minimize the long-run average total cost. We show that a stationary continuous-stage echelon base-stock policy is optimal. That is, at each geographic point along the supply stream,...