This paper studies echelon stock (R, nQ) policies in serial production/inventory systems with stochastic demand. We provide a recursive procedure to compute the steady state echelon inventory levels of the systems, which can be used to evaluate the long-run average holding and backorder costs as...

We establish lower bounds on the minimum cost of managing certain production-distribution networks with setup costs at all stages and stochastic demands. These networks include serial, assembly, and one-warehouse multi-retailer systems. We obtain the bounds through novel cost-allocation schemes....

We address a fundamental two-echelon distribution system in which the sales volumes of the retailers are endogenously determined on the basis of known demand functions. Specifically, this paper studies a distribution channel where a supplier distributes a single product to retailers, who in turn...