Inventory sharing strategy and optimization for reusable transport items

Guoquan Liu, Lei Li, Jianghang Chen and Fei Ma

International Journal of Production Economics, 2020, vol. 228, issue C

Abstract: Reusable transport items (RTI), as a sustainable solution to the increasing packaging wastes generated along with the ever-growing globalized supply chains, create both challenges and opportunities to organizations for their management. A trend of organizations outsourcing their RTI activities explains the rapid emerging of a third-party RTI pooler. Yet few research studies have been conducted from the perspective of the RTI pooler for optimizing their customer allocation, and few on the decision support model for a practical case in the developing economies. This research intends to fill in this gap. Motivated by a case study of a leading RTI pooling company in China, this research proposes to implement a sharing strategy into the daily planning operation of distribution and routing. A decision support framework is developed to optimize the distribution flows and dispatching vehicle routes by the use of a two-stage solution process. Empirical results demonstrate an economic savings of 28.1% in the transportation costs along with environmental and social advantages implicated by the shortened travel distance of vehicles.

Keywords: Reusable transport items; Dedicated mode; Sharing mode; Distribution flow; Capacitated vehicle routing; Empirical data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:228:y:2020:i:c:s0925527320301286

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107742

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