Location, Routing, and Inventory
Read this article. In it, a model is presented to help determine the number of distribution centers, their locations, and capacity among other factors. Among the 15 assumptions presented, which do you feel are most important and least important?
Background
Literature review
One of the important factors of the total
productivity and profitability of a supply chain is to consider its
distribution network, which can be used to achieve variety of the supply
chain objectives. Designing a distribution network consists of three
subproblems, namely, location allocation, vehicle routing, and inventory
control. In the literature, there are some research studies
amalgamating two of the above subproblems, such as location-routing
problems, inventory-routing problems, and location-inventory problems.
These three subproblems of a distribution network design are considered
in few papers simultaneously. Location-routing problems are surveyed and
classified by Min et al. and Nagy and Salhi.
Inventory-routing problems are studied in several studies. In
addition, a number of studies have considered location-inventory
problems. Finally, Ahmadi Javid and Azad presented a new model for a location-routing-inventory problem.
They considered one objective for their model and did not consider
transportation time and risk-pooling. However, in this paper, we present
a multi-objective model to concurrently optimize location, allocation,
capacity, inventory, selection of vehicles, and routing decisions with
risk-pooling in a stochastic supply chain system for the first time.
These decisions are made in a way that the total system cost and the
total transportation time are minimized.