Supply chain management is related to the coordination of materials, products and information flows among suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and customers involved in producing and delivering a final product or service. In this setting the centralization of inventory management and coordination of actions, to further reduce costs and improve customer service level, is a relevant issue. In this paper, we provide a review of the applications of cooperative game theory in the management of centralized inventory systems. Besides, we introduce and study a new model of centralized inventory: a multi-client distribution network.
In this paper we deal with the cost allocation problem arising in an inventory transportation system with a single item and multiple agents that place joint orders using an EOQ policy. In our problem, the fixed order cost of each agent is the sum of a first component (common to all agents) plus a second component which depends on the distance from the agent to the supplier. We assume that agents are located on a line route, in the sense that if any subgroup of agents places a joint order, its fixed cost is the sum of the first component plus the second component of the agent in the group at maximal distance from the supplier. For these inventory transportation systems we introduce and characterize a rule which allows us to allocate the costs generated by the joint order. This rule has the same flavor as the Shapley value, but requires less computational effort. We show that our rule has good properties from the point of view of stability.
A centralized inventory problem is a situation in which several agents face individual inventory problems and make an agreement to coordinate their orders with the objective of reducing costs. In this paper we identify a centralized inventory problem arising in a farming community in northwestern Spain, model the problem using two alternative approaches, find the optimal inventory policies for both models, and propose allocation rules for sharing the optimal costs in this context.
In this note we deal with inventory games as defined in Meca et al. (Math. Methods Oper. Res. 57:483-491, 2003). In that context we introduce the property of immunity to coalitional manipulation, and demonstrate that the SOC-rule (Share the Ordering Cost) is the unique allocation rule for inventory games which satisfies this property.
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