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Multi-echelon inventory management in supply chains

Historically, the echelons of the supply chain, warehouse, distributors, retailers, etc., have been managed independently, buffered by large inventories. Increasing competitive pressures and market globalization are forcing firms to develop supply chains that can quickly respond to customer needs. To remain competitive and decrease inventory, these firms must use multi-echelon inventory management interactively, while reducing operating costs and improving customer service.

Inventories exist throughout the SC in various forms for various reasons. The lack of a coordinated inventory management throughout the SC often causes the bullwhip effect, namely an amplification of demand variability moving towards the upstream stages. This causes excessive inventory investments, lost revenues, misguided capacity plans, ineffective transportation, missed production schedules, and poor customer service. Many scholars have studied these problems, as well as emphasized the need of integration among SC stages, to make the chain effectively and efficiently satisfy customer requests (e.g. reference). Beside the integration issue, uncertainty has to be dealt with in order to define an effective SC inventory policy. In addition to the uncertainty on supply (e.g. lead times) and demand, information delays associated with the manufacturing and distribution processes characterize SCs.

Inventory management in multi-echelon SCs is an important issue, because there are many elements that have to coordinate with each other. They must also arrange their inventories to coordinate. There are many factors that complicate successful inventory management, e.g. uncertain demands, lead times, production times, product prices, costs, etc., especially the uncertainty in demand and lead times where the inventory cannot be managed between echelons optimally.

Most manufacturing enterprises are organized into networks of manufacturing and distribution sites that procure raw material, process them into finished goods, and distribute the finish goods to customers. The terms multi-echelon or multilevel production/distribution networks are also synonymous with such networks (or SC), when an item moves through more than one step before reaching the final customer. Inventories exist throughout the SC in various forms for various reasons. At any manufacturing point, they may exist as raw materials, work in progress, or finished goods. They exist at the distribution warehouses, and they exist in-transit, or in the pipeline , on each path linking these facilities.

Manufacturers procure raw material from suppliers and process them into finished goods, sell the finished goods to distributors, and then to retail and/or customers. When an item moves through more than one stage before reaching the final customer, it forms a multi-echelon inventory system. The echelon stock of a stock point equals all stock

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