Determination of a Desirable Inventory Policy in a three Echelon Multilayer Supply Chain with Normal Demand

Inventory control is one of the most important issues in supply chain management. In this paper, a three-echelon production, distribution, inventory system composed of one producer, a set of wholesalers and retailers is considered. Costumers' demands can be approximated by a normal distribution...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Maghsoud Amiri, Mehdi Seif barghy, Laaya Olfat, Seyed Hossein Razavi Hajiagha
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Iran University of Science & Technology 2012-03-01
Series:International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Production Research
Subjects:
Online Access:http://ijiepr.iust.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-1-134&slc_lang=en&sid=1
Description
Summary:Inventory control is one of the most important issues in supply chain management. In this paper, a three-echelon production, distribution, inventory system composed of one producer, a set of wholesalers and retailers is considered. Costumers' demands can be approximated by a normal distribution and the inventory policy is a kind of continuous review (R, Q). In this paper, a model based on standard cost structure of inventory systems is developed and a heuristic algorithm is designed to optimize the developed model. The application of model is examined in a series of designed experiments that are compared with simulation results. These comparisons verify the validity of the model. Regarding to real complexities in three-echelon systems analysis, the proposed method can have a wide application in practical problems with the same considerations and assumptions. In addition, this method can be used to approximate those systems that follow a Poisson demand.
ISSN:2008-4889
2345-363X