Lateral transshipment in 2- and N-retailer inventory systems with periodic review policy | |
| Author | Ramidayu Yousuk |
| Call Number | AIT Diss. no.ISE-12-10 |
| Subject(s) | Inventory control Production management |
| Note | A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering and Management |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | In a highly competitive market, manufacturers and retailers face the randomness of customer demand. Stockout, which is caused by unpredicted demand, is considered critical in today’s market. All supply chains are now under pressure to increase or at least maintain their customer service level while reducing the operation cost. Motivated by this fact, this dissertation aims to develop the mathematical models for the inventory distribution system with preventive lateral transshipment and to derive the approximate optimal inventory and transshipment policy. The models are developed using the expected path approach. The key differences from the previous works are that the assumptions of identical retailers and negligible replenishment lead times are relaxed. Moreover, fixed transshipment cost is also included in the total system cost. Thus, the models developed in this dissertation can be applied in a more general inventory distribution problem. The study comprises of two phases. First, a two-retailer inventory system is examined. Second, the research is extended to the multi-retailer inventory system. Numerical experiments are conducted to illustrate the benefits of inventory redistribution. The results show that cost parameters play a substantial role in transshipment decision. In general, the attractiveness of preventive lateral transshipment increases when(1) unit transshipment cost is lower, (2) transshipment point is moved closer to the end of replenishment cycle, and (3) the replenishment lead time is longer. Further investigation also found that a decrease in system cost mainly comes from the reduction of the expected inventory holding cost. In addition, the results also exhibit that in case of identical retailers, the benefits of preventive lateral transshipment are more significant when the number of retailers increases. Moreover, by employing fixed charged transportation problem to help find the optimal transshipment policy, the proposed model is proved to be effective in solving the problem with fixed transshipment cost. For the case of nonidentical retailers, few examples are also considered to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model. |
| Year | 2011 |
| Type | Dissertation |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Department of Industrial Systems Engineering (DISE) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Industrial Systems Engineering (ISE) |
| Chairperson(s) | Huynh Trung Luong; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Voratas Kachitvichyanukul;Do Ba Khang; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Kasetsart University Bangkok, Thailand; |
| Degree | Thesis (Ph.D.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2011 |