In this paper, we present a unified approach to study a class of cooperative games arising from inventory centralization. The optimization problems corresponding to the inventory games are formulated as stochastic programs. We observe that the strong duality of stochastic linear programming not only directly leads to a series of recent results concerning the non-emptiness of the cores of such g...

Whenever demand for a single item can be categorized into classes of di erent priority an inventory rationing policy should be considered In this paper we analyse a continuous review s Q model with lost sales and two demand classes A so called critical level policy is applied to ration the inventory among the two demand classes With this policy low priority demand is rejected in anticipation of...

Seasonal items like fruits, fish, winter cosmetics, fashion apparel, etc. generally exhibits different demand patterns at various times during the season. Production and inventory planning must reflect this property for cost effectiveness and optimization of resources. This paper presents two production-inventory models for perishable seasonal products that minimize total inventory costs. The m...

Multi-stage robust optimization problems, where the decision maker can dynamically react to consecutively observed realizations of the uncertain problem parameters, pose formidable theoretical and computational challenges. As a result, the existing solution approaches for this problem class typically determine suboptimal solutions under restrictive assumptions. In this paper, we propose a robus...

An inventory model of a volume flexible manufacturing system for a deteriorating item is developed, taking a stock -dependent demand rate. It is assumed that the demand rate remains stock-dependent for an initial period after which a uniform demand rate follows as the stock comes down to a certain level. The unit production cost is taken to be a function of the finite production rate which is t...

When inventory management, distribution and routing decisions are determined simultaneously, implementing a vendor-managed inventory strategy, a difficult combinatorial optimization problem must be solved to determine which customers to visit, how much to replenish, and how to route the vehicles around them. This is known as the inventory-routing problem. We analyze a distribution system with o...

Article history: Received 14 May 2007 Received in revised form 25 June 2008 Accepted 30 June 2008 Available online 11 July 2008 The SimMOp framework for generating solutions to simulation optimization problems containing multiple objectives is presented. The complexity within this subject is the conflicting multiple stochastic outputs whose estimates are only available through simulation. The f...

This article provides an introduction to approximation algorithms in stochastic optimization models arising in various application domains, including central areas of operations management, such as scheduling, facility location, vehicle routing problems, inventory and supply chain management and revenue management. Unfortunately, these models are very hard to solve to optimality both in theory ...

The EOQ model will have a century of its discovery in two years, and recently still, many researchers have been using alternative approaches to model and solve inventory systems. The EOQ/EPQ models have been developed using different optimization methods. However, in many of the works that deal with the EOQ/EPQ with backorders only linear backorders cost is considered. This paper proposes anoth...

We consider combined inventory control and throughput time reduction in multi-echelon, multiindenture spare part networks for system upkeep of capital goods. We construct a model in which standard throughput times (TPT) for repair and transportation can be reduced at additional costs. We first estimate the marginal impact of TPT reduction on the system availability. Next, we develop an optimiza...