Supply Chain Management and its Applications in Computer Science

4The Warehousing Problem

4.1. Introduction

One of the most discussed problems in the supply chain (SC) is the storage of firms’ items aiming at minimizing their costs while trying to fulfill numerous resource constraints. In this chapter, we consider an SC network where firms attempt to design a storage plan, given a prefixed number of facilities, and distribute them to a set of customers. The possible rented facilities are determined through a signal sent by other companies about their remaining capacities as well as their proposed rent costs. The aim is the collaboration of different companies through sharing storage capacities to improve logistics efficiency and cost saving. In the context of supply chain management, collaboration can be applied by sharing transportation capacity (CO3 project), warehousing capacity [CAR 10] as well as resource capacity [BER 11]. The collaboration in transportation is accomplished by shared truckloads that periodically shuttle between companies’ customers. The warehousing capacity concerns shared/common warehouses to be used by a set of collaborative companies and the resource capacity consists of sharing customer demands. Considering these three types of capacity sharing can influence the design of the network as costs can be reduced by using a collaborative network. In fact, a set of facilities must be deployed to keep a high service level and at the lowest cost. To do so, each company must analyze the potential and already existing networks ...