Title
Approximation algorithms for the joint replenishment problem with deadlines
Abstract
The Joint Replenishment Problem (JRP) is a fundamental optimization problem in supply-chain management, concerned with optimizing the flow of goods over time from a supplier to retailers. Over time, in response to demands at the retailers, the supplier sends shipments, via a warehouse, to the retailers. The objective is to schedule shipments to minimize the sum of shipping costs and retailers' waiting costs. We study the approximability of JRP with deadlines, where instead of waiting costs the retailers impose strict deadlines. We study the integrality gap of the standard linear-program (LP) relaxation, giving a lower bound of 1.207, and an upper bound and approximation ratio of 1.574. The best previous upper bound and approximation ratio was 1.667; no lower bound was previously published. For the special case when all demand periods are of equal length we give an upper bound of 1.5, a lower bound of 1.2, and show APX-hardness.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1007/978-3-642-39206-1_12
international colloquium on automata, languages and programming
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Joint replenishment problem,NP-completeness,APX-hardness,Approximation algorithms
Conference
abs/1212.3233
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
6
J. Scheduling 18(6): 545-560 (2015)
8
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.54
10
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Marcin Bienkowski125427.18
Jaroslaw Byrka252331.45
Marek Chrobak31665151.84
Neil B. Dobbs480.54
Tomasz Nowicki5453.61
MAXIM SVIRIDENKO62072140.65
Grzegorz Świrszcz7222.02
Neal E. Young81224146.74