Introduction to algorithms
Improved low-degree testing and its applications
STOC '97 Proceedings of the twenty-ninth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
A threshold of ln n for approximating set cover
Journal of the ACM (JACM)
A constant approximation algorithm for the one-warehouse multi-retailer problem
SODA '05 Proceedings of the sixteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Computers and Operations Research
Coordinated Replenishment Strategies in Inventory/Distribution Systems
Management Science
Inbound Logistic Planning: Minimizing Transportation and Inventory Cost
Transportation Science
Inventory Replenishment and Inbound Shipment Scheduling Under a Minimum Replenishment Policy
Transportation Science
Two-stage inventory models with a bi-modal transportation cost
Computers and Operations Research
Economic Lot-Sizing for Integrated Production and Transportation
Operations Research
Understanding the key success factors of RFID use in Supply Chain Management: a Delphi study
International Journal of Mobile Communications
An Efficient Greedy Heuristic for Warehouse-Retailer Network Design Optimization
Transportation Science
Optimizing replenishment polices using Genetic Algorithm for single-warehouse multi-retailer system
Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
A simple and fast 2-approximation algorithm for the one-warehouse multi-retailers problem
Proceedings of the twenty-second annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete Algorithms
Improved approximation algorithm for the one-warehouse multi-retailer problem
APPROX'06/RANDOM'06 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, and 10th international conference on Randomization and Computation
Inventory replenishment model: lot sizing versus just-in-time delivery
Operations Research Letters
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We analyze the problem faced by companies that rely on TL (Truckload) and LTL (Less than Truckload) carriers for the distribution of products across their supply chain. Our goal is to design simple inventory policies and transportation strategies to satisfy time varying demands over a finite horizon, while minimizing system wide cost by taking advantage of quantity discounts in the transportation cost structures. For this purpose, we study the cost effectiveness of restricting the inventory policies to the class of zero-inventory-ordering (ZIO) policies in a single-warehouse multiretailer scenario in which the warehouse serves as a cross-dock facility. In particular, we demonstrate that there exists a ZIO inventory policy whose total inventory and transportation cost is no more than 4/3 (5.6/4.6 if transportation costs are stationary) times the optimal cost. However, finding the best ZIO policy is an NP hard problem as well. Thus, we propose two algorithms to find an effective ZIO policy: An exact algorithm whose running time is polynomial for any fixed number of retailers, and a linear-programming-based heuristic whose effectiveness is demonstrated in a series of computational experiments. Finally, we extend the worst-case results developed in this paper to systems in which the warehouse does hold inventory.