Traditional Inventory Planning to Multi-Echelon Supply Chain Inventory Planning: A Critical Review

Abstract

The inventory planning problem was first addressed with assumptions of a single echelon and a single non-perishable product with deterministic independent demand without any constraints; but now, the research has shifted to a multi-echelon supply chain inventory planning with many constraints arising from supply chain members at different stages with stochastic behavior in terms of demand and lead time for both perishable and non-perishable products. Multi-echelon inventory planning has been a particularly difficult problem to solve in supply chain and not much progress has been made in this context to be useful to managers