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...

No: 011-0319 Abstract Title: Impact of Inventory Allocation Policies on Downstream Supply Variability in a Multi-echelon System Authors Information: SUMAN NIRANJAN School of Management, State University of New York Binghamton, Vestal, NY 13902 607-777-4120 [email protected] FRANK CIARALLO Biomedical, Industrial, and Human Factors Engineering, Wright State University, Dayton, OH 45435 937-...

We consider the optimal control of a production inventory-system with a single product and two customer classes where items are produced one unit at a time. Upon arrival, customer orders can be fulfilled from existing inventory, if there is any, backordered, or rejected. The two classes are differentiated by their backorder and lost sales costs. At each decision epoch, we must determine whether...

We consider N-stage serial production/distribution systems with stationary demand at the most downstream stage. First, we study classical Clark-Scarf model with both average cost and discounted cost criteria. The optimal echelon base-stock levels are obtained in terms of only probabilistic distributions of leadtime demand. This analysis yields a novel approach for developing bounds and simple h...

This paper presents a three-level supply chain model which includes single supplier, several distribution centers and sets of retailers. For this purpose, by adopting the queuing approach, a mixed nonlinear integer programming model is formulated. The proposed model follows minimizing the total cost of the system by determining: 1) the number and location of distribution centers between candida...

We consider an N -stage serial supply chain with random demand, and study the problem of minimizing average inventory-holding cost subject to a pre-specified fill-rate constraint. Since the form of the optimal policy is unknown, we focus on base-stock policies. We present a bottom-up recursive procedure for policy evaluation and develop bounds on the optimal basestock levels. Using these bounds...

We consider a manufacturer (i.e., a capacitated supplier) that produces to stock and has two classes of customers. The primary customer places orders at regular intervals of time for a random quantity, while the secondary customers request a single item at random times. At a predetermined time the manufacturer receives advance demand information regarding the order size of the primary customer....

In this paper, the cost function for a three-echelon inventory system with two warehouses is derived. Transportation times are constant and retailers face independent Poisson demand. Replenishments are one-for-one. The lead time of a retailer is determined not only by the constant transportation time but also by the random delay incurred due to the availability of stock at the warehouses. We co...

Consider a continuous-review, serial inventory system with N stages. Material flows from stage N to stage N − 1, N − 1 to N − 2, etc., until stage 1, where stationary compound Poisson demand occurs. Let and denote the demand rate and the mean of demand size, and D t denote the demand over a time interval t. There is a constant lead time Lj for stage j . Define L̃i = ∑i j=1Lj . Inventory is contr...

In this paper, we establish an exact framework for a class of supply chains with at most one directed path between every two stages. External demands follow compound Poisson processes, the transit times are stochastic, sequential, and exogenous, and each stage controls its inventory by an installation base-stock policy under continuous review. Unsatisfied demand at each stage is fully backorder...