A BRIEF SUMMARY ON A CONTINUOUS APPROXIMATION PROCEDURE FOR DETERMINING INVENTORY DISTRIBUTION SCHEMAS FOR SUPPLY CHAINS WITH DISCONTINUOUS PRODUCTION AND SHIPPING PATTERNS

摘要

The research herein presents an integrated inventory supply chain optimization model that incorporates the issues of location, production, inventory, and transportation simultaneously. Building upon prior research, the objective of this research is to determine the optimal number as well as the optimal size of shipments under a generalized variety of production and shipping rate scenarios. Herein, we generalize to include non-instantaneous, gradual shipping scenarios as well as discontinuous production rates. This much more generalized shipping and production scenario is investigated and closed form expressions for the optimal number and the optimal size of shipments for each scenario are obtained.