Designing e-commerce supply chains: a stochastic facility–location approach

e-Commerce activity has been increasing during recent years, and this trend is expected to continue in thenear future. e-Commerce practices are subject to uncertainty conditions and high variability in customers’demands. Considering these characteristics, we propose two facility–location models that...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Pagès Bernaus, Adela, Ramalhinho-Lourenço, Helena, Juan Pérez, Ángel A., Calvet Liñan, Laura
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10459.1/71763
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1111/itor.12433
http://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/71763
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:e-commerce
Supply-chain management
Capacitated facility–location problem
Stochastic combinatorial optimization
Simheuristics
Stochastic programming
Descripción
Sumario:e-Commerce activity has been increasing during recent years, and this trend is expected to continue in thenear future. e-Commerce practices are subject to uncertainty conditions and high variability in customers’demands. Considering these characteristics, we propose two facility–location models that represent alternativedistribution policies in e-commerce (one based on outsourcing and another based on in-house distribution).These models take into account stochastic demands as well as more than one regular supplier per customer.Two methodologies are then introduced to solve these stochastic versions of the well-known capacitatedfacility–location problem. The first is a two-stage stochastic-programming approach that uses an exact solver.However, we show that this approach is not appropriate for tackle large-scale instances due to the compu-tational effort required. Accordingly, we also introduce a “simheuristic” approach that is able to deal withlarge-scale instances in short computing times. An extensive set of benchmark instances contribute to illustratethe efficiency of our approach, as well as its potential utility in modern e-commerce practices.