MULTI-ECHELON SUPPLY CHAINS IN A MILITARY SETTING

Abstract

In this work, we consider the problem of routing shipments of commodities to locationson a graph with a multi-echelon structure. Noting that the problem is based in amilitary setting, any models proposed are designed to make sense in that setting. The routing problem is to be considered over a time horizon of T periods with the objective of minimizing routing and holding costs of inventory subject to demand, transport and storage constraints. We first propose a model that assumes that the demand forecast is accurate, withan associated linear optimization problem that may be solved obtain the solution. We then briefly consider uncertainty in demand, requiring that our solution be feasible for all instances of demand lying in a polyhedral uncertainty set W. We also show the existence of (s, S) policies for the multi-echelon resupply problem in the single commodity case. We also propose a separate extension to the deterministic model that considers uncertainty in the length of the time horizon.