An Analysis of One Warehouse, N Retailer Production Inventory Systems

Résumé du livre

In this thesis the one warehouse, N retailer production inventory system is examined. We present properties of optimal operating policies and methods to determine various operating policies given a fixed cost for set-up and an inventory carrying charge at each facility. We assume that the external demands on this system occur either at a known continuous rate that is stationary over an infinite time horizon, or at a known rate that may vary in each of a finite number of periods. We will refer to the former case as a continuous one warehouse, N retailer problem and the latter as a dynamic demand problem. A one warehouse, N retailer system is a special case of the more general arborescent production inventory system. We begin by examining the previous research on systems with this arborescent structure as well as reviewing the literature dealing with the serial and assembly multi-echelon production inventory systems. The continuous one warehouse, N retailer problem is then examined in detail. The basic model is introduced as well as some previously solved special cases. Several basic production policies that have been suggested for this system are reviewed and properties of an overall optimal solution are discussed. Optimal and heuristic algorithms are developed to determine the values of the parameters in 'single cycle' policies (Schwarz, 1973) and make comparisons based on both the quality of solutions obtained and the computational effort. It has been conjectured by Graves and Schwarz (1977) that these single cycle policies are optimal for certain larger classes of production plans and we demonstrate that this is not the case. Finally, the class of multiple cycling policies and their relation to optimality, is discussed.