This paper studied the problem of determining the optimal inventory level to meet the customer service target level in a situation where the customer demand for each branch of a nationwide retailer is uncertain. To this end, ISR (In-Stock Ratio) was defined as a key management indicator (KPI) that can be used from the perspective of a nationwide retailer such as Samsung, LG, or Apple that sells goods at branches nationwide. An optimization model was established to allow the retailer to minimize the total amount of inventory held at each branch while meeting the customer service target level defined as the average ISR. This paper proves that there is always an optimal solution in the model and expresses the optimal solution in a generalized form using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condition regardless of the shape of the probability distribution of customer demand. In addition, this paper studied the case where customer demand follows a specific probability distribution such as a normal distribution, and an expression representing the optimal inventory level for this case was derived.

Unlike most researches that focus on single manufacturer or single buyer, this research studies the cooperation policy for two participants of supply chain such as single vendor and single buyer. Especially, this paper deals with single vendor-single buyer integrated-production inventory problem. If the buyer orders products, then the vendor will start to make products and then the products will be shipped from the vendor to the buyer many times. The buyer is supposed to order again when the buyer’s inventory level hits reorder point during the last shipment and this cycle keeps repeated. The buyer uses continuous review inventory policy and customer’s demand is assumed to be probabilistic. The contribution of this paper is to present a mixed approach and derive its cost function. The existing policy assumes that the size of shipping batch from single vendor to single buyer is increasing, called Type 1, or constant, called Type 2. In mixed approach, the size of shipping batch is increasing at the beginning part of the cycle, and then its size is constant at the ending part of the cycle. The number of shipping for Type 1 and Type 2 in a cycle in mixed approach is determined to minimize total cost. The relationship between parameters, for example, the holding cost per product, the set up cost per order, and the shortage cost per item and decision variables such as order quantity, safety factor, the number of shipments, and shipment increasing factor is figured out via sensitivity analysis. Finally, it is statistically proved that the mixed approach is superior to the existing approaches.

This paper considers one vendor-one buyer integrated-production inventory problem. If the buyer orders products, then the vendor will start to make products and then the products will be shipped from the vendor to the buyer many times. The buyer is supposed to order again when the buyer’s inventory level hits reorder point during the last shipment and this cycle keeps repeated. Buyer uses continuous review inventory policy and customer’s demand is assumed to be probabilistic. The contribution of this paper is to develop a new approach for one-vendor-one-buyer integrated production-inventory problem.

This paper is concerned with the single vendor single buyer integrated production inventory problem. To make this problem more practical, space restriction and lead time proportional to lot size are considered. Since the space for the inventory is limited in most practical inventory system, the space restriction for the inventory of a vendor and a buyer is considered. As product’s quantity to be manufactured by the vendor is increased, the lead time for the order is usually increased. Therefore, lead time for the product is proportional to the order quantity by the buyer. Demand is assumed to be stochastic and the continuous review inventory policy is used by the buyer. If the buyer places an order, then the vendor will start to manufacture products and the products will be transferred to the buyer with equal shipments many times. The mathematical formulation with space restriction for the inventory of a vendor and a buyer is suggested in this paper. This problem is constrained nonlinear integer programming problem. Order quantity, reorder points for the buyer, and the number of shipments are required to be determined. A Lagrangian relaxation approach, a popular solution method for constrained problem, is developed to find lower bound of this problem. Since a Lagrangian relaxation approach cannot guarantee the feasible solution, the solution method based on the Lagrangian relaxation approach is proposed to provide with a good feasible solution. Total costs by the proposed method are pretty close to those by the Lagrangian relaxation approach. Sensitivity analysis for space restriction for the vendor and the buyer is done to figure out the relationships between parameters.

The single vendor single buyer integrated production inventory problem with lead time proportional to lot size and space restriction is studied. Demand is assumed to be stochastic and the continuous review inventory policy is used for the buyer. If the buyer places an order with lots of products, then the vendor will produce lots of products and the products will be transferred to the buyer with equal shipments many times. Mathematical model for this problem is defined and a Lagrangian relaxation approach is developed.

본 논문은 전국적인 소매업체의 각 지점별 고객 수요가 불확실한 상황에서 고객 서비스 목표 수준을 충족하는 최적 재고 수준을 결정하는 문제에 대해 연구하였다. 이를 위해 전국에 분포한 지점에서 물품을 판매하는 베스트바이, 월마트, 혹은 시어스와 같은 전국적인 소매업체 관점에서 사용할 수 있는 핵심 관리 지표(KPI)로서 ISR(In-Stock Ratio)를 정의하였으며, 전국적인 소매업체가 평균 ISR로 정의되는 고객 서비스 목표 수준을 충족하면서 각 지

Most approaches for continuous review inventory problem need tables for loss function and cumulative standard normal distribution. Furthermore, it is time-consuming to calculate order quantity (Q) and reorder point (r) iteratively until required values ar

The inventory routing problem (IRP) is an important area of Supply Chain Management. The objective function of IRP is the sum of transportation cost and inventory cost. We propose an Artificial Immune System(AIS) to solve the IRP. AIS is one of natural computing algorithm. An hyper mutation and an vaccine operator are introduced in our research. Computation results show that the hyper mutation is useful to improve the solution quality and the vaccine is useful to reduce the calculation time.

In today's business transactions, it is more and more common to see that the buyers are allowed some grace period before they settle the account with the supplier. In this regard, we analyze the problem of determining the buyer's EOQ when the supplier allows day-terms credit. For the analysis, it is assumed that the buyer's demand rate is a function of the on -hand inventory level and the relevant mathematical model is developed.