Integrated Supply Chain Management via Randomized Rounding
研究了最小化仓库和零售商在有限时间内的订购、配送和库存持有成本的供应链问题，提出了基于随机舍入的2.77近似算法，并针对包含零售商订购启动成本的情况给出了5近似算法。
We consider the supply chain problem of minimizing ordering, distribution, and inventory holding costs of a supply chain formed by a set of warehouses and retailers over a finite time horizon, which we call the production and distribution problem. This is a common generalization of the classical metric facility location problem and joint replenishment problem that coordinates the network design and inventory management decisions in an integrated manner. This coordination can represent significant economy for many applications, where network design and operational costs are normally considered separately. This problem is considered when the instances satisfy assumptions such as metric space of warehouse and retailer locations, and monotonic increasing inventory holding costs. In this work, we give a 2.77-approximation based on the randomized rounding of the natural mixed-integer programming relaxation. Also, we give a 5-approximation for the case that objective function includes retailer ordering setup costs.