A New Decision Rule for Lateral Transshipments in Inventory Systems
Management Science
Integrated inventory pooling for firms servicing both on-line and store demand
Computers and Operations Research
A model for lumpy demand parts in a multi-location inventory system with transshipments
Computers and Operations Research
Optimal Policies for Transshipping Inventory in a Retail Network
Management Science
Insights into inventory sharing in service parts logistics systems with time-based service levels
Computers and Industrial Engineering
Meta-heuristic Algorithm for the Transshipment Problem with Fixed Transportation Schedules
IEA/AIE '08 Proceedings of the 21st international conference on Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems: New Frontiers in Applied Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Industrial Engineering
Computers and Operations Research
Performance assessment for single echelon airport spare part management
Computers and Industrial Engineering
In-Season Transshipments Among Competitive Retailers
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
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The emergence of carriers that deliver items to geographically dispersed destinations quickly and at a reasonable cost, combined with the low cost of sharing information through networked databases, has opened up new opportunities to better manage inventory. We investigate these benefits in the context of a supply chain in which a manufacturer supplies expensive, low-demand items to vertically integrated or autonomous retailers via one central depot. The manufacturer's lead time is assumed to be due to the geographical distance from the market or a combination of low volumes, high variety, and inflexible production processes. We formulate and solve an appropriate mathematical model based on one-for-one inventory policies in which a replenishment order is placed as soon as the customer withdraws an item. We find that sharing and transshipment of items often, but not always, reduces the overall costs of holding, shipping, and waiting for inventory. Unexpectedly, these cost reductions are sometimes achieved throughincreasing overall inventory levels in the supply chain. Finally, while sharing of inventory typically benefits all the participants in decentralized supply chains, this is not necessarily the case--sharing can hurt the distributor or individual retailers, regardless of their relative power in the supply chain.