Starting in the 1960s, a number of academic works have focused in serial and distributed multi-echelon structures and in both deterministic and stochastic environments. Clark and Scarf (1960, 1962) developed a seminal work in which they presented optimal policies for a serial multi-echelon system. Schwartz (1973) studied a deterministic model having one warehouse and N retailers and showed that...

An optimisation-based control framework that simultaneously determines the optimal inventory and product pricing policies is developed for multi-product, multi-echelon supply chain networks. The optimisation problem aims at adjusting the available manufacturing resources, product distribution, inventories and prices for the entire supply chain network to satisfy demand while maximising network ...

In this paper, for effective multi-echelon supply chains under stochastic and fuzzy environments, an inventory management framework and deterministic/stochastic-neuro-fuzzy cost models within the context of this framework are structured. Then, a numerical application in a three-echelon tree-structure chain is presented to show the applicability and performance of proposed framework. It can be s...

The inventory management of multi-echelon repairable items systems is a major problem as these items are relatively expensive and slow-moving, so, inventory management can be a real problem due to mathematical complexities. In this work, a study was performed in a complex high-value products manufacturer, whose repairable items are both expensive and critical. Data of parts’ failure, storage an...

Mitigating the bullwhip effect is one of crucial problems in supply chain management. In this research, centralized and decentralized model predictive control strategies are applied to control inventory positions and to reduce the bullwhip effect in a benchmark four-echelon supply chain. The supply chain under consideration is described by discrete dynamic models characterized by balance equati...

this paper aims to investigate the integrated production/distribution and inventory planning for perishable products with fixed life time in the constant condition of storage throughout a two-echelon supply chain by integrating producers and distributors. this problem arises from real environment in which multi-plant with multi-function lines produce multi-perishable products with fixed life ti...

A centralized multi-echelon, multi-product supply chain network is presented in a multi-period setting with products that show varying demand against price. An important consideration in such complex supply chains is to maintain system performance at high levels for varying demands that may be sensitive to product price. In order to examine the price-centric behavior of the customers, the conce...

We address multi-item inventory systems with random and seasonally fluctuating, and possibly correlated, demands. The items are produced in two stages, each with its own lead-time; in the first stage a common intermediate product is manufactured. The production volumes in the first stage are bounded by given capacity limits. We develop an accurate lower bound and close-to-optimal heuristic stra...