Title: Considering discrete delivery ordering and shipment consolidation in a three-echelon supply chain with failure

Authors: Amir Hossein Nobil; Mehdi Seifbarghy; Amir Hosein Afshar Sedigh; Davar Pishva

Addresses: Parandak Institute of Higher Education, Parandak, Markazi, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Information Science, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand ' Faculty of Asia Pacific Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, 1-1 Jumonjibaru, Beppu, Oita 874-8577, Japan

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to extend research results published in two recent papers which had investigated single-vendor single-buyer inventory model with lost sales and discrete delivery orders and a model in which a single buyer orders a product from multiple vendors who deliver their products to the buyer as joint shipments. We extend the two models studied in the literature by considering a multi-product three-echelon supply chain including multiple suppliers, single manufacturer and single distributor with discrete delivery orders for raw materials and products. We assume that each product needs a specific raw material provided by the suppliers and the raw materials are delivered in batches to the manufacturer, which produces n products through n types of raw materials, and sends them to the distributor. All the products are manufactured utilising one machine and delivered in batches to the distributor. We also assume that a portion of the batches sent to the distributor by the manufacturer are defective. We have developed two heuristics based on genetic algorithm (GA) and biogeography-based optimisation (BBO) algorithm and our numerical results indicate that the GA-based heuristic slightly outperforms that of the BBO algorithm.

Keywords: supply chain; inventory; discrete delivery ordering; shipment consolidation; meta-heuristic algorithms.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOM.2016.084148

International Journal of Advanced Operations Management, 2016 Vol.8 No.4, pp.247 - 275

Received: 11 Jan 2016
Accepted: 01 Dec 2016
Published online: 14 May 2017 *

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