A two-item two-warehouse periodic review inventory model with transshipment

作者：Ramakrishna Koushik S; Sharafali Moosa^*; Lim Yun Fong

来源：Annals of Operations Research, 2015, 233(1): 365-381.

DOI：10.1007/s10479-013-1483-4

• Multi-item inventory
• Transshipment
• Pooling
• Markov decision models
• Lagrangian relaxation

We study a two-item two-warehouse periodic review inventory model that allows transshipment between warehouses and emergency orders. The model helps to determine two decisions: (i) the order up to levels for the two items at the two warehouses, and (ii) whether to accept a transshipment request from the other warehouse. The acceptance of a transshipment request in a warehouse depends on the time until the next review epoch and the inventory level of the warehouse. We propose a search procedure, which is a combination of greedy heuristics and a Lagrangian relaxation method, to minimize the total operating cost of the system. Numerical experiments reveal that optimality can be achieved using the proposed procedure. The time threshold to accept a transshipment request in a warehouse increases with the emergency shipment cost. In addition, the more inventory available in the warehouse the more likely for a transshipment request to be accepted.

• 出版日期2015-10