| The intense competition in today's economy forces companies to improve their operations in order to keep up with the increase in customer expectations regarding cost and services. In recent years, the coordination of different supply chain operations in order to improve the system-wide performance has gained much interest among researchers and practitioners. This study proposes a methodology to create a decision support system to help managers make effective decisions in the integrated analysis of the inventory and transportation system.; In this study, using several performance measures the behavior of the system is observed under a wide range of experimentally controlled environments. This study focuses on how stochastic parameters have an impact on the performance of the system, so both demand and supply uncertainties are included. Also, the simulation model in this study aims to provide the ability to simultaneously consider the total inventory and transportation cost, as well as the service level. The issues of stochastic elements and the cost-service level trade-off are not well-defined in the existing literature.; The results from the simulation suggest no universal solution. The behavior of each performance measure in a wide range of environments is quite varied due to the complex relationships among experimental factors. In many cases, the impacts of each factor in different performance measures are also in conflict. The simulation model from this study can prove to be a very effective tool by providing useful information for trade-offs so that logistics managers can choose the best option that suits their organization's needs. |
