Joint Inventory Replenishment Planning of an E-Commerce Distribution System with Distribution Centers at Producers’ Locations
Bo Dai and
Fenfen Li
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Bo Dai: School of Management, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha 410205, China
Fenfen Li: School of Public Administration, Hunan University of Finance and Economics, Changsha 410205, China
Logistics, 2021, vol. 5, issue 3, 1-14
Abstract:
In this study, joint inventory replenishment planning of an Alibaba distribution system is investigated, which contributes to the circular economy concept. The distribution system includes suppliers, central distribution centers, and front distribution centers. The total replenishment cost of the distribution system can be reduced by setting up distribution centers at producers’ locations (PDCs), which also helps to reduce the wastages of commodities during the transportation and CO 2 emission released by transportation. The joint replenishments of multiple products are constrained by a maximum joint replenishment quantity. Trans-shipments happen among different distribution centers. The considered problem seeks to find the replenishment quantities of products among stocks, which can minimize the total replenishment cost of the system, and is formulated as a novel mathematical model. The effectiveness of our proposed model is validated by computational experiments based on Alibaba’s data. The results indicate that PDCs and trans-shipments can bring about lower replenishment costs if a common service level of the system is given.
Keywords: inventory management; e-commerce; distribution systems; optimization; circular economy; CO 2 emission; distribution centers at producers’ locations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L8 L80 L81 L86 L87 L9 L90 L91 L92 L93 L98 L99 M1 M10 M11 M16 M19 R4 R40 R41 R49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlogis:v:5:y:2021:i:3:p:45-:d:586551
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