Authors:
Bo Dai
1
;
Haoxun Chen
1
;
Yuan Li
2
;
Yidong Zhang
2
;
Xiaoqing Wang
2
and
Yuming Deng
2
Affiliations:
1
Industrial Systems Optimization Laboratory, Charles Delaunay Institute and UMR CNRS 6281, University of Technology of Troyes, 12 Rue Marie Curie, CS 42060, Troyes 10004 and France
;
2
Alibaba Supply Chain Platform (ASCP), Alibaba (China) Co., Ltd, 969 West Wen Yi Road, Yu Hang District, Hangzhou 311121 and China
Keyword(s):
Inventory Management, Distribution Systems, Joint Inventory Replenishment, Warehouses at the Locations of Producers, Optimization, e-Commerce.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Industrial Engineering
;
Inventory Theory
;
Knowledge Discovery and Information Retrieval
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Logistics
;
Methodologies and Technologies
;
Operational Research
;
Optimization
;
Supply Chain Management
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
In this paper, an inventory replenishment planning problem in a three-echelon distribution system of Alibaba is studied. In addition to central distribution centers and front distribution centers, this system also has warehouses at the locations of producers. Multiple products are jointly replenished with minimum and maximum joint replenishment quantity constraints. Transshipments between distribution centers/warehouses are allowed. This problem, which is to determine the replenishment quantity of each product between any two inventory locations in the system, is formulated as a bi-objective optimization model that aims at finding a tradeoff between overall service level and total logistics cost of the system. This model is solved by applying an augmented ɛ-constraint method. The effectiveness of the model is demonstrated by numerical experiments generated from the data of Alibaba. The results show that having warehouses at the locations of producers can lead to lower logistics costs
with a given customer service level.
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