Consistent Stochastic Inventory Routing Management (COSIMA)

The COSIMA project is joint work at the Chair for Production and Operations Management with International Focus at the University of Vienna, Austria and the Chair for Logistics and Supply Chain Management at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Both chairs greatly appreciate the funding by the german research foundation (DFG) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

The project integrates two core logistics decisions in supply chains typically investigated independently or sequentially: inventory management and transportation routing optimization. We extend the existing knowledge with regard to several important real-world characteristics and develop new approaches for the integration. Stochastic demands at the retailers are typically non-stationary and correlated, emergency shipments are allowed and service level requirements have to be met. Moreover, we incorporate consistency, i.e. delivery at a certain retailer should always take place within the same time interval. This leads to a two-stage multi-echelon inventory problem with routing, stochastic lead times and non-equidistant review periods.