IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transe/v161y2022ics1366554522000771.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Data-driven ordering and transshipment decisions for online retailers and logistics service providers

Author

Listed:
  • Cheng, Lihong
  • Guo, Xiaolong
  • Li, Xiaoxiao
  • Yu, Yugang

Abstract

Emerging advanced technologies enable logistics service providers (LSPs) to offer supply chain services, such as inventory management, rather than only shipping services. In the traditional retailer-led system, the retailer makes the ordering and transshipment decisions and outsources shipping to the LSP, but this paper studies an LSP-led preventive transshipment system where the LSP is the decision-maker, providing the optimal ordering and transshipment policy solution to the online retailer. An optimal two-threshold transshipment policy is proposed for the LSP-led system. The LSP has lower operational cost for transshipment than the retailer, so one may expect that the LSP can bear more risk of mismatch between the transshipment and uncertain demand, leading the LSP to be more aggressive in transshipment. Interestingly, the analysis reveals that the transshipment quantity chosen by the LSP is not necessarily high. The LSP will transfer less inventory between distribution centers than the retailer if the delivery cost or transshipment cost of the LSP, or the lost sale cost, holding fee, or selling price of the retailer are high. Based on real industrial data, the evaluation result shows that preventive transshipment in the LSP-led system can bring an average increase of 40.33% (even 93.31% for products with high demand uncertainty in the first selling period) in the total profit of the retailer and the LSP over the non-transshipment scenario. Importantly, even if the transshipment cost is the same for both the retailer and LSP, using the optimal policy decided by the LSP rather than the retailer will generate a profit improvement of 6.37%.

Suggested Citation

  • Cheng, Lihong & Guo, Xiaolong & Li, Xiaoxiao & Yu, Yugang, 2022. "Data-driven ordering and transshipment decisions for online retailers and logistics service providers," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transe:v:161:y:2022:i:c:s1366554522000771
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2022.102684
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1366554522000771
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tre.2022.102684?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ping Josephine Xu & Russell Allgor & Stephen C. Graves, 2009. "Benefits of Reevaluating Real-Time Order Fulfillment Decisions," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 340-355, January.
    2. Yanzhe (Murray) Lei & Stefanus Jasin & Amitabh Sinha, 2018. "Joint Dynamic Pricing and Order Fulfillment for E-commerce Retailers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(2), pages 269-284, May.
    3. Hossein Abouee-Mehrizi & Oded Berman & Shrutivandana Sharma, 2015. "Optimal Joint Replenishment and Transshipment Policies in a Multi-Period Inventory System with Lost Sales," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 63(2), pages 342-350, April.
    4. Minghui Lai & Weili Xue & Qian Hu, 2019. "An Ascending Auction for Freight Forwarder Collaboration in Capacity Sharing," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(4), pages 1175-1195, July.
    5. M.A. Darwish & M. Alkhedher & Abdulrahman Alenezi, 2019. "Reducing the effects of demand uncertainty in single-newsvendor multi-retailer supply chains," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(4), pages 1082-1102, February.
    6. Dhahri, Akrem & Gharbi, Ali & Ouhimmou, Mustapha, 2022. "Integrated production-transshipment control policy for a two-location unreliable manufacturing system," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    7. Meng Li & Tao Li, 2018. "Consumer search, transshipment, and bargaining power in a supply chain," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(10), pages 3423-3438, May.
    8. Jing Shao & Harish Krishnan & S. Thomas McCormick, 2011. "Incentives for Transshipment in a Supply Chain with Decentralized Retailers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 361-372, July.
    9. Marshall Fisher & Ramnath Vaidyanathan, 2014. "A Demand Estimation Procedure for Retail Assortment Optimization with Results from Implementations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(10), pages 2401-2415, October.
    10. Jason Acimovic & Stephen C. Graves, 2015. "Making Better Fulfillment Decisions on the Fly in an Online Retail Environment," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 17(1), pages 34-51, February.
    11. Kouki, Chaaben & Babai, M. Zied & Jemai, Zied & Minner, Stefan, 2019. "Solution procedures for lost sales base-stock inventory systems with compound Poisson demand," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 172-182.
    12. Paterson, Colin & Kiesmüller, Gudrun & Teunter, Ruud & Glazebrook, Kevin, 2011. "Inventory models with lateral transshipments: A review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 210(2), pages 125-136, April.
    13. Guo, Chaojie & Thompson, Russell G. & Foliente, Greg & Kong, Xiang T.R., 2021. "An auction-enabled collaborative routing mechanism for omnichannel on-demand logistics through transshipment," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    14. Chandrasekhar Das, 1975. "Supply and Redistribution Rules for Two-Location Inventory Systems: One-Period Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(7), pages 765-776, March.
    15. Lingxiu Dong & Nils Rudi, 2004. "Who Benefits from Transshipment? Exogenous vs. Endogenous Wholesale Prices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(5), pages 645-657, May.
    16. Michael K. Lim & Ho-Yin Mak & Zuo-Jun Max Shen, 2017. "Agility and Proximity Considerations in Supply Chain Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(4), pages 1026-1041, April.
    17. Lyu, Xiaohui & Chen, Haoxun & Wang, Nengmin & Yang, Zhen, 2019. "A multi-round exchange mechanism for carrier collaboration in less than truckload transportation," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 38-59.
    18. Nils Rudi & Sandeep Kapur & David F. Pyke, 2001. "A Two-Location Inventory Model with Transshipment and Local Decision Making," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(12), pages 1668-1680, December.
    19. Yulin Wang & Yongping Zhang & Fei Tao & Tingyu Chen & Ying Cheng & Shunkun Yang, 2019. "Logistics-aware manufacturing service collaboration optimisation towards industrial internet platform," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(12), pages 4007-4026, June.
    20. G. J. Feeney & C. C. Sherbrooke, 1966. "The (S - 1, S) Inventory Policy Under Compound Poisson Demand," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(5), pages 391-411, January.
    21. Liu, Weihua & George Shanthikumar, J. & Tae-Woo Lee, Paul & Li, Xiang & Zhou, Li, 2021. "Special issue editorial: Smart supply chains and intelligent logistics services," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    22. David D. Yao & Sean X. Zhou & Weifen Zhuang, 2016. "Joint Initial Stocking and Transshipment—Asymptotics and Bounds," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 25(2), pages 273-289, February.
    23. Qi, Yingxiu & Harrod, Steven & Psaraftis, Harilaos N. & Lang, Maoxiang, 2022. "Transport service selection and routing with carbon emissions and inventory costs consideration in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    24. Silbermayr, Lena, 2020. "A review of non-cooperative newsvendor games with horizontal inventory interactions," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    25. Huang, Min & Tu, Jun & Chao, Xiuli & Jin, Delong, 2019. "Quality risk in logistics outsourcing: A fourth party logistics perspective," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(3), pages 855-879.
    26. Daniel Granot & Greys Sošić, 2003. "A Three-Stage Model for a Decentralized Distribution System of Retailers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 51(5), pages 771-784, October.
    27. Velibor V. Mišić & Georgia Perakis, 2020. "Data Analytics in Operations Management: A Review," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 158-169, January.
    28. Cruijssen, Frans & Cools, Martine & Dullaert, Wout, 2007. "Horizontal cooperation in logistics: Opportunities and impediments," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 129-142, March.
    29. Wang, Jianxin & Lim, Ming K. & Zhan, Yuanzhu & Wang, XiaoFeng, 2020. "An intelligent logistics service system for enhancing dispatching operations in an IoT environment," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    30. Jiu, Song, 2022. "Robust omnichannel retail operations with the implementation of ship-from-store," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    31. Rong Li, 2020. "Reinvent Retail Supply Chain: Ship‐from‐Store‐to‐Store," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(8), pages 1825-1836, August.
    32. Lou, Yaqi & Feng, Lipan & He, Shuguang & He, Zhen & Zhao, Xiukun, 2020. "Logistics service outsourcing choices in a retailer-led supply chain," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    33. Ying Rong & Lawrence V. Snyder & Yang Sun, 2010. "Inventory sharing under decentralized preventive transshipments," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(6), pages 540-562, September.
    34. Feng, Xuehao & Moon, Ilkyeong & Ryu, Kwangyeol, 2017. "Warehouse capacity sharing via transshipment for an integrated two-echelon supply chain," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 17-35.
    35. Tang, Christopher S. & Veelenturf, Lucas P., 2019. "The strategic role of logistics in the industry 4.0 era," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 1-11.
    36. Okan Örsan Özener & Özlem Ergun & Martin Savelsbergh, 2013. "Allocating Cost of Service to Customers in Inventory Routing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 112-125, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hang Thi Thanh Vu & Jeonghan Ko, 2022. "Integrated Inventory Transshipment and Missing-Data Treatment Using Improved Imputation-Level Adjustment for Efficient Cross-Filling," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-24, October.
    2. Zhou, Zihan & Wang, Xinhui, 2023. "Replenishment and transshipment in periodic-review systems with a fixed order cost," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(3), pages 1240-1247.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rong Li, 2020. "Reinvent Retail Supply Chain: Ship‐from‐Store‐to‐Store," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(8), pages 1825-1836, August.
    2. Zhou, Zihan & Wang, Xinhui, 2023. "Replenishment and transshipment in periodic-review systems with a fixed order cost," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(3), pages 1240-1247.
    3. Chun-Hung Chiu & Gang Hao & Xin Dai & Hang Xie, 2020. "Inventory sharing of professional optics product supply chain with equal power agents," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 291(1), pages 169-194, August.
    4. Çömez-Dolgan, Nagihan & Dağ, Hilal & Fescioglu-Unver, Nilgun & Şen, Alper, 2023. "Multi-plant manufacturing assortment planning in the presence of transshipments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 310(3), pages 1033-1050.
    5. Xin Fang & Soo-Haeng Cho, 2014. "Stability and Endogenous Formation of Inventory Transshipment Networks," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1316-1334, December.
    6. Silbermayr, Lena, 2020. "A review of non-cooperative newsvendor games with horizontal inventory interactions," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    7. Feng, Pingping & Wu, Feng & Fung, Richard Y.K. & Jia, Tao, 2018. "Evaluation of two transshipment policies in a two-location decentralized inventory system under partial backordering," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 207-224.
    8. Dong, Yan & Xu, Kefeng & Evers, Philip T., 2012. "Transshipment incentive contracts in a multi-level supply chain," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 223(2), pages 430-440.
    9. Li, Ying & Liao, Yi & Hu, Xinxin & Shen, Wenjing, 2020. "Lateral transshipment with partial request and random switching," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    10. Lee, Chungseung & Park, Kun Soo, 2016. "Inventory and transshipment decisions in the rationing game under capacity uncertainty," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 82-97.
    11. Paterson, Colin & Kiesmüller, Gudrun & Teunter, Ruud & Glazebrook, Kevin, 2011. "Inventory models with lateral transshipments: A review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 210(2), pages 125-136, April.
    12. Ji, Xiang & Sun, Jiasen & Wang, Zebin, 2017. "Turn bad into good: Using transshipment-before-buyback for disruptions of stochastic demand," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 150-161.
    13. Reut Noham & Michal Tzur, 2014. "The single and multi‐item transshipment problem with fixed transshipment costs," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 61(8), pages 637-664, December.
    14. Chen, Yan & Huang, Zhenhua & Ai, Hongshan & Guo, Xingkun & Luo, Fan, 2021. "The Impact of GIS/GPS Network Information Systems on the Logistics Distribution Cost of Tobacco Enterprises," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    15. Park, Seung Jae, 2018. "Swapping inventory between competing firms," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 26-46.
    16. Shan Li & Kay‐Yut Chen, 2020. "The Commitment Conundrum of Inventory Sharing," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(2), pages 353-370, February.
    17. Dehghani, Maryam & Abbasi, Babak & Oliveira, Fabricio, 2021. "Proactive transshipment in the blood supply chain: A stochastic programming approach," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    18. Zhang, Peng & Xu, Xiaofeng & Shi, Victor & Zhu, Jing, 2020. "Simultaneous inventory competition and transshipment between retailers," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    19. Naderi, Siamak & Kilic, Kemal & Dasci, Abdullah, 2020. "A deterministic model for the transshipment problem of a fast fashion retailer under capacity constraints," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    20. Xiaohong Yu & Sujuan Wang & Xindong Zhang, 2019. "The Impact of Fairness Concerns on the Formation of Retailers Alliance with Consideration of Transshipment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-19, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transe:v:161:y:2022:i:c:s1366554522000771. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600244/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.