A lateral transshipment model for perishable inventory management

Dilupa Nakandala, Henry Lau and Paul K.C. Shum

International Journal of Production Research, 2017, vol. 55, issue 18, 5341-5354

Abstract: Since inventory costs account for half of logistics costs, optimal inventory management to minimise total inventory costs remains a sustainable competitive advantage. Lateral transshipment (LT) is evidently a proven strategy to minimise total inventory costs. The additional LT costs are more than compensated by lowering the stock-out costs. Previous LT models have not been applied to perishable products. Our proposed LT model embodies spoilage costs in the total inventory costs function with the other cost components (purchase from a regular supplier, LT, backordering and holding), and optimises the trade-off among these five key cost components. Numerical examples from a supermarket chain case study demonstrate that, as compared against the no or lower spoilage costs scenarios, lower LT costs are required to trigger the decision point for implementing LT in the higher spoilage costs scenario. However, common to both the with and without spoilage costs scenarios, LT is still the preferred strategy to minimise total inventory costs, given the decision rules are satisfied.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2017.1312587 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:55:y:2017:i:18:p:5341-5354

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TPRS20

DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2017.1312587

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Research is currently edited by Professor A. Dolgui

More articles in International Journal of Production Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().