Multi-Item Inventory Systems with Joint Ordering and Transportation Decisions

摘要

The paper considers a multi-item inventory system with two possibletransportation options for shipping the goods from 'oversea' to the central warehouse. These options are a 'Full Container Load' (FCL) and a 'Less Container Load' (LCL). Orders for the family of items are all triggered by individual periodic (R,S)-strategies. Economics of scale exist because of reduced freight rates when using an FLC instead of a LCL. An FCL can be achieved by enlarging the initial order quantities. A fast and simple algorithm is proposed to decide whether an initial order should be enlarged or not. The heuristic is based on a comparison of the expected saved shipping costs and the expected extra holding costs, caused by an enlargement. Some numerical examples show that the heuristic works quite satisfactorily.