The Inventory And Transshipment Decisions In A 2-echelon Supply Chain System With N Demand Points

In recent years, with the development of socio-economics, China's logistics costs showing a large-scale growth. To effectively deal with the burden of logistics costs, which inventory costs lay in the center, many scholars have done a lot of inventory problem researches on it. Although many scholars had done so many researches on inventory issues from different angles, few researchers put inventory and transshipment issues discussed in one context in a 2-echelon supply chain system. In fact, the 2-echelon supply chain system with n demand points are widely used in today's commercial society. For optimizing the costs in 2-echelon supply chain system with n demand points, we are trying to find an effective solution to tell the market participator what's the best quantity of ordering and what's the best strategy of transshipment when transshipment is needed. So, our research focus on the transshipment and inventory decisions in a 2-echelon supply chain system with n demand points.For clearly study the problems above, we have done some work in three aspects.Firstly, according to the development of China's logistics industry and literatures studied in this field around the world, we propose our research questions – a study about inventory and transshipment decisions in a 2-echelon supply chain system with n demand points.Secondly, we carry on the mathematical models construction on inventory and transshipment decisions in a 2-echelon supply chain system with n demand points. When dealing with the inventory decision, we provide the reference values under decentralized decision-making model and centralized decision-making model. Through a case study, we illustrate the performance of centralized decision-making system is superior to decentralized decision-making system. When dealing with the transshipment decision, after the construction of mathematical model based the problem context, we code the problem with LINGO software for solving the model. Through a case study, we could find the costs of the system is sharply decreasing compare to the system that is not allowed transshipment. In fact, our result can effectively solve the unbalance between supply and demand within 2-echelon supply chain system with n demand points.Finally, according to our research result, we provide practical proposals on operation and management of inventory. At last, We give out our study imagination for further study.