An Integrated Location-Inventory Model for Vendor-Managed Inventory in the Retail Supply Chain

摘要

Supply chain management involves multiple and conflicting objectives. A multi-objective optimization procedure which permits a trade-off evaluation for an integrated location-inventory model is initially presented. In this paper, we propose an integrated model to incorporate inventory control decisions - such as economic order quantity, safety stock and inventory replenishment decisions under vendor-managed inventory collaborative initiative into typical facility location models, which are used to solve the distribution network design problem. This model includes elements of total cost, customer service and flexibility as its objectives. Moreover, a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm is developed to determine the optimal facility location portfolio in order to reach best compromise of these conflicting criteria. A hybrid evolutionary approach is proposed and its scenario analysis is implemented on a real large retail supply chain in Taiwan to investigate the model performance and to illustrate how parameter changes influence its output. Some preliminary results are described.