الفهرس 
E-FULFILLMENT: A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE INVENTORY THEORYOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
Abstract
Inventory system concerns about the stock in hand and making sure that there is no sales loss due to shortage of stock. It also makes sure that relevant costs like: holding cost, capital cost are at the minimum. The goal of an inventory system is to determine the optimal stock levels and reorder point.
The thesis consists of five chapters, summary and list of
publications.
Chapter I presents a brief review of the types of inventory systems and their properties for both retail and e-tail stores.
Chapter II presents inventory models like: Deterministic models where Replenishment lead time is known and rate of demand is known and constant too. It also presents continuous review uniform Demand – known also as EOQ, in which units are assumed to be withdrawn continuously at a known constant rate denoted by λ. The objective of this inventory problem is to determine how often to make a production run and what size it should be so that the cost per unit of time is minimized. It will first deals with the assumption that the shortages are not allowed and then this assumption will be relaxed.
Chapter III considers a single-product inventory system that serves both online and traditional customers where demands are independent Poisson processes. A (Q,r) replenishment policy is used and replenishment lead times are assumed to be constant.
The optimal parameters of the system are derived by minimizing the expected annual cost. The model has been illustrated with numerical examples and discuss the sensitivity of the results to variables such as demand lead time and the split between online and traditional orders.
Chapter IV presents a two-echelon dual channel supply chain where customers can purchase either from retail or e-tail channel. It also presents two different strategies: Centralized Inventory Strategy and Stackelberg Inventory Strategy. For each strategy we obtained the optimal inventory levels for both channels and the respective expected profits.
The material of this chapter has been accepted and published in the International Journal of Original Research, May 2016. India.
Chapter V deals with a two-echelon inventory model where manufacturer warehouse (upper echelon) which covers e-tail demand and retail store (lower echelon) which covers retail demand and the product is available in two supply channels: retail channel and e-tail direct channel. The system receives demand from two different segments: retail store loyal customers and internet based direct channel loyal customers. To develop operational measures of supply chain flexibility, we defined: inventory holding costs and sales lost costs. Computational outcomes indicate that the dual-channel strategy outperforms the other two channel strategies in most cases.