Title: A new robust model for location-inventory in three echelon supply chain with uncertain demand in small and medium business enterprises

Authors: Nafiseh Aghabozorgi; Mahdi Alinaghian; Seyed Mojtaba Sajadi

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Isfahan, Iran ' Department of System and Industrial Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, 83111-84156, Esfahan, Iran ' Faculty of Entrepreneurship, University of Tehran, Farshi Moghadam, 16 St., North Kargar Ave., 1439813141, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: Today, with changing patterns of production and services competition, independent companies are faced with competition between supply chains. Most of the small and medium businesses (SMEs) are still used to the traditional supply planning, production and distribution. It means, each of these SMEs plan independently for their activities, in most cases, this will increase the cost of the whole supply chain. In this study, we present a robust model of location, inventory in three-echelon supply chain under uncertainty. Model has been considered in single-period, multi-product, multi-mode transportation with three level producers - distributors-retailers in certain and robust mode. The innovation of this article are considering multi-mode transportation, rousting the model and sending the goods directly from the factory to the retailer. The objective of the proposed model is minimising the total cost of the three-echelon supply chain. The certain model is solved by GAMS and robust model is solved by GAMS and augmented ε-constraint method.

Keywords: supply chain management; SCM; location; inventory management; uncertain demand; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; robust modelling; three echelon supply chains.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPMB.2017.080938

International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking, 2017 Vol.7 No.1, pp.38 - 58

Received: 04 Mar 2015
Accepted: 06 May 2015

Published online: 13 Dec 2016 *

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