Solving the multi-buyer joint replenishment problem with the RAND method

The multi-buyer joint replenishment problem (MJRP) is the multi-item inventory problem of coordinating the replenishment of a group of items that are jointly ordered from a single supplier. Joint replenishment of a group of items reduces the cost by decreasing the number of times that the major ordering cost is charged. The objective of MJRP is to develop inventory policies minimizing the total costs over the planning horizon. The single buyer joint replenishment problem may be solved by techniques collectively described as the best available heuristics (e.g. Simulated Annealing, Genetic Procedures, Tabu Search, and others), collectively discussed as the RAND method. In this paper, we propose a new efficient RAND method to solve MJRP.