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Perishable Items in Multi-Level Inventory Systems

Bouchery, Yann (2009) MIO920
Production Management
Abstract
This master thesis studies a two-echelon distribution system for perishable items with two non identical retailers. Each location is managed following a standard continuous (R, Q) ordering policy. The demand occurs solely at the retailers and follows independent Poisson processes. Customers are backordered when the retailer is out of stock. The items are considered as fixed lifetime perishables. Whenever an item perished, it is discarded from the stock. The model includes fix transportation time and the allocation policy at the central warehouse is a First-Come-First-Serve one.
This kind of system is very complicated and therefore hard to study. In this master thesis, we focus on a simulation study of 48 different problems with both a... (More)
This master thesis studies a two-echelon distribution system for perishable items with two non identical retailers. Each location is managed following a standard continuous (R, Q) ordering policy. The demand occurs solely at the retailers and follows independent Poisson processes. Customers are backordered when the retailer is out of stock. The items are considered as fixed lifetime perishables. Whenever an item perished, it is discarded from the stock. The model includes fix transportation time and the allocation policy at the central warehouse is a First-Come-First-Serve one.
This kind of system is very complicated and therefore hard to study. In this master thesis, we focus on a simulation study of 48 different problems with both a FIFO and a LIFO issuing policy at the retailers. The goal of this study is therefore to optimize the values of R in (R, Q) ordering policies considering that the items are perishables. To do so, we try to optimize the values of the reorder points at every location. We also try to find some general behaviour of the system and we compare the FIFO and the LIFO best found solution.
More than 1000 hours of computer-time were used for this study. For every problem, we conducted an optimization process to find better values of the reorder points at every location. For the FIFO case, an average cost reduction of more than 20% was found. It exists a good opportunity in term of cost savings while taking into account the perishable characteristic of the items. Another finding of our study is that the LIFO case has good performance comparing to what expected. On average, the costs increase is only 7% while considering a LIFO issuing policy instead of a FIFO one. Moreover, the values of the reorder points for the FIFO best found solution are still the same than the LIFO best found solution in 70% of the problems studied. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Bouchery, Yann
supervisor
organization
course
MIO920
year
type
M1 - University Diploma
subject
other publication id
09/5327
language
English
id
1978137
date added to LUP
2011-06-16 16:11:38
date last changed
2011-06-20 12:38:13
@misc{1978137,
  abstract     = {{This master thesis studies a two-echelon distribution system for perishable items with two non identical retailers. Each location is managed following a standard continuous (R, Q) ordering policy. The demand occurs solely at the retailers and follows independent Poisson processes. Customers are backordered when the retailer is out of stock. The items are considered as fixed lifetime perishables. Whenever an item perished, it is discarded from the stock. The model includes fix transportation time and the allocation policy at the central warehouse is a First-Come-First-Serve one.
This kind of system is very complicated and therefore hard to study. In this master thesis, we focus on a simulation study of 48 different problems with both a FIFO and a LIFO issuing policy at the retailers. The goal of this study is therefore to optimize the values of R in (R, Q) ordering policies considering that the items are perishables. To do so, we try to optimize the values of the reorder points at every location. We also try to find some general behaviour of the system and we compare the FIFO and the LIFO best found solution.
More than 1000 hours of computer-time were used for this study. For every problem, we conducted an optimization process to find better values of the reorder points at every location. For the FIFO case, an average cost reduction of more than 20% was found. It exists a good opportunity in term of cost savings while taking into account the perishable characteristic of the items. Another finding of our study is that the LIFO case has good performance comparing to what expected. On average, the costs increase is only 7% while considering a LIFO issuing policy instead of a FIFO one. Moreover, the values of the reorder points for the FIFO best found solution are still the same than the LIFO best found solution in 70% of the problems studied.}},
  author       = {{Bouchery, Yann}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Perishable Items in Multi-Level Inventory Systems}},
  year         = {{2009}},
}