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In this paper, we study the differences between the Centralized and Decentralized approaches in a two-echelon stochastic inventory system under the lost sale policy. We formulate the condition in which the retailer applies (r, Q) inventory policy, and his relation with the upper echelon who acts as a manufacturer. This situation has not been considered in the literature before. The Centralized approach results in optimal solution of the system and the Decentralized one is based on Stackelberg game in which the manufacturer is the leader. The demand arrives according to the stationary Poisson process. We drive the long-run average cost functions, then a set of computational steps are... 

Blood availability in hospitals is of high humanitarian importance, thus blood shortage is not desired at all. High wastage rate of blood in hospitals is an important issue, which becomes more important as the standards of health care services becomes higher. In order to address blood shortage and wastage issues in a hospital, this paper develops a new inventory management model as a decision making tool to help making tactical and operational level decisions for a Hospital Blood Bank (HBB) inventory management. These decisions include issuance and ordering policy and the aim of the model is to reduce blood wastage and shortage. For this purpose, a multi period, multi-product inventory... 

In this paper, a multi-product economic production quantity problem with limited warehouse-space is considered in which the orders are delivered discretely in the form of multiple pallets and the shortages are completely backlogged. We show that the model of the problem is a constrained non-linear integer program and propose a genetic algorithm to solve it. Moreover, design of experiments is employed to calibrate the parameters of the algorithm for different problem sizes. At the end, a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology  

In this paper we consider a newsvendor problem in which the suppliers offer quantity discounts. We assume that the initial inventory at the beginning of the period is a random variable. This assumption, among other applications, may apply to the case where the decision about the order quantity must be made at a time long before the start of the period and the available inventory may decrease due to several factors, such as deterioration, consumption, etc. up to the start of the period. In this paper, we obtain the optimal order quantity that maximizes the total profit for this model  

Although managing and controlling the inventories of perishable products is progressively becoming more important, they are often neglected in lot-sizing research and modeling. This paper studies a new multi-product multi-period dynamic lot sizing problem, where the inventories of products are assumed to be expired at a pre-specified date. For this purpose we assume a retailer that purchases products in large quantities (lot size) from manufacturers, and then sells smaller quantities (or single units) to the consumer. So, the order quantities can be merely an integer multiplier of that product batch size. The retailer also owns a capacitated warehouse. In order to make decisions on "how much... 

Despite significant advancements in medicine, human blood is still a scarce resource. Only humans produce it, and there is currently no other product or alternative chemical process that can be used to generate blood. For this reason, blood is a vital commodity in healthcare systems. Since blood is also a perishable product, its inventory management is difficult. The challenge is in holding enough stock to ensure a high level of supply while keeping losses from expiration at a minimum. This research will investigate blood inventory management in a hospital, and develop a mathematical model to manage blood ordering and issuing. This study will account for the fact that blood demand and supply... 

The classical single-period problem (SPP) is to find a product's order quantity that maximizes the expected profit in a single period under probabilistic demand. In this paper we consider a SPP model in which a percent of the quantity ordered to the supplier contains defective units and is a random variable with a known distribution function. We assume that the initial inventory at the beginning of the period is a random variable. This assumption, among other applications, may apply to the case where the decision about the order quantity must be made at a time long before the start of the period and the available inventory may decrease stochastically due to several factors, such as... 

Inventory management of deteriorating items faces major challenges by uncertain demand, uncertain lead time, perishability, and high customer service level requirements. So, this issue is extremely important in many corporations today. The periodic up-to level policy for deteriorating products under stochastic demand and stochastic lead time is not paid enough attention up to now. In this paper we propose a new approach to study inventory up-to level policy of deteriorating products under normal distributed demand and lead time by considering service level requirements. To model deterioration process, a non-linear increasing holding cost function is considered. After developing the... 

Nowadays, location of distribution centers integrated with inventory or transportation decision play an important role in optimizing supply chain management. Location-inventory models analyze the location and inventory policies in distribution network, simultaneously. Developing location-inventory models under fuzzy environment can enrich the model, and this is our approach in this article. We consider the demand as a fuzzy variable and formulate the problem using credibility theory in order to locate distribution centers (DCs) as well as determining inventory levels in DCs. The derived model belongs to nonlinear mixed integer programming problems, and we presented a genetic algorithm to... 

The Newsboy problem has always been an important issue in inventory management. The multi-product newsboy problem with random yield and budget constraint named as the Gardener Problem is one of the novels and popular extensions of the newsboy problem. Different from the existing studies, this paper presents a multi-product gardener problem with reservation policy. Moreover, a discount rate is offered to those customers who are willing to make reservations. In addition to the demand from the original customers, extra demand is included in the model due to the motivation received by the discount rate. A solution algorithm namely the multi-product gardener problem with reservation policy...