Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research, 1(12), pp. 73-82, 2012 Available online at http://www.cjasr.

com ISSN: 2251-9114, 2012 CJASR

Full Length Research Paper Optimal Order Allocation and Supplier Selection with Imperfect Quality Products and Financial Constraint
Mostafa Setak*, Mohammad Hossein Gorji
Department of Industrial Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, No. 7, Pardis St., Molla Sadra Ave. Tehran, Iran. * Corresponding author: E-mail: setak@kntu.ac.ir, Tel: (+9821)84063373, Fax: (+9821)88674858.
Received 8 September 2012; Accepted 14 October 2012

The Classical Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) is a well-known inventory control technique. Two common assumptions in this technique are: (i) there is one level and (ii) the ordered items are of perfect quality. We have considered a two-level supply chain with one retailer and a set of suppliers. A model has been formulated that simultaneously determines both supplier selection and inventory allocation problems in the supply chain. The retailer orders multi product with a special selling season to a set of suppliers. The received products dependent on the suppliers contain a certain percentage of imperfect quality items and have different prices. It is assumed that the retailer has a limited capital and maximum storage space to hold the received products. On the other hand, the suppliers have a limited capacity for supply. So, the problem is modeled as a mixed integer nonlinear programming model. The retailer needs to make a decision about which products, with which quantities and to which suppliers should he order for maximizing the total profit. The clothing, fishery and fruits industries give good examples for the introduced model. Finally, two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed model. Key words: Supply chain management; Inventory control; Optimal lot-sizing; Supplier selection; Imperfect quality.

1. Introduction The Classical Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) is a commonly used method for inventory control. A common assumption in using the economic order quantity models is that all received items are of perfect quality. However, in the real world, the supplied products may sometimes lack a perfect quality due to some reasons. In such a case, each of the items provided by the suppliers may be of imperfect quality with a P probability. Rezai and Davoodi (2008) have presented a model to maximize the profit. They considered the point that the decision maker needs to make a decision about which products, with which quantities, to which suppliers and in which periods should be ordered. They assumed that the retailer has a maximum storage space to hold his products. On the other hand, it was considered that shortage is not allowed, but the point is that the two mentioned restrictions, i.e., maximum storage space and shortage restrictions, in most demand cases are

contradictory and result in lack of any justified area for the presented model. We consider a two-level supply chain, including single retailer and multiple suppliers. It is assumed that shortage is allowed, and the retailer incurs shortage cost for the unfulfilled demand. Also, the products are sold for a certain selling season. As you see in Fig 1, in the considered supply chain, the retailer faces to a set of suppliers, each with limited supply capacity. The received items are of imperfect quality (but are not necessarily defective), and the items with imperfect quality can entirely be sold at the first of the period with a discount price after a 100% inspection process. Products received from each supplier have different prices. But, the purchase cost is assumed to be fixed, regardless of the number of ordered units. The retailer, stores inventory in a warehouse to satisfy the demand over the period. Therefore, holding cost as the cost associated with having inventory on hand occurs. It is assumed that the retailer has a maximum storage space for holding the products.

73

Setak and Gorji Optimal Order Allocation and Supplier Selection with Imperfect Quality Products and Financial Constraint

Supplier 1

Supplier 2

....

Supplier j

....

Supplier n

Retailer

Product 1

Product 2

....

Product i

....

Product m

Products with imperfect quality

Products with good quality

Products with imperfect quality

Customer Demand

Fig. 1: Structure of the considered Supply chain

In this paper, the effect of financial restriction on the supply chain is investigated. The retailer has an internal capital level, and the capital may either be sufficient or insufficient for desirable operations. Although the retailer may have a limited internal capital, he can access to financial resources from foreign financial markets with a certain rate of return and can borrow the necessary extra capital. In such a condition, the retailer should make a decision about which products, with which quantities and to which suppliers should he order and how much capital should be borrowed in order to maximize the total expected profit. Finally, the problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming model. We want to propose a model that is applicable in the real world. This paper is organized in the following way. In section 2, we review the relevant existing literatures. Then in section 3, we describe our proposed model and its formulation. The efficiency of the model is illustrated by two representative examples in section 4. Finally, we express our conclusions and constraints that should be considered in the future researches in section 5. 2. Literature Review One of the most frequent decisions faced by retailers, is how much or how many of each product ordered in order to satisfy customer demand. In the traditional Economic Production Quantity (EPQ) models, it is assumed that all items are of perfect quality. However, it is common in all industries that a percent of produced items are of imperfect quality. Salameh and Jaber (2000) have hypothesized a production condition where products are not of perfect quality. They imagined

that poor-quality products are sold as a single batch at the end of a 100% inspection process, and they developed the traditional economic production quantity model. Porteus (1986) has introduced a simple model that considers an important relationship between quality and lot size. He attempted to demonstrate that lower setup costs can benefit production systems with improve in quality control. Rosenblatt and Lee (1986) have studied the effects of imperfect production processes on the optimal production period. They derived the optimal production cycle and demonstrated that is shorter than the classical economic production quantity model. Chan et al. (2003) have provided a framework to integrate lower pricing, rework and reject conditions into a single economic production quantity model. Ouyang and Chang (2000) have investigated the effect of quality improvement on the modified lot size reorder point models that involve variable lead time and partial backorders. Hayek and Salameh (2001) have studied the impact of imperfect quality products on the finite production model. Defective products were assumed to be reworked at a constant rate. They derived the optimal operational policy that minimizes the total inventory cost per unit time for the finite production model. Chiu (2003) has considered the impacts of the reworking of defective products on the economic production quantity model that shortage is allowed and backordered. The optimal lot size that minimizes the overall costs has been derived where backorders are allowed. Freimer et al. (2006) have investigated the impact of imperfect items on economic production quantity decisions. They considered two types of investment in process improvements that are: (i)

74

Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research, 1(12), pp. 73-82, 2012

reducing setup costs and (ii) improving process quality. Singh et al. (2010) have considered two different time dependent function of holding cost. They assumed that some of the imperfect quality items can be sold at a reduced selling price and have derived a profit function to express the model. Furthermore, in Economic Order Quantity models, a basic assumption is all of received items are of perfect quality. Goyal et al. (2003) have developed a simple approach for determining an optimal integrated vendor-buyer inventory policy for products with imperfect quality. The objective is to minimize the total joint annual costs occurred by the vendor and the buyer. Wee et al. (2007) have developed an optimal inventory model for products with imperfect quality that shortage is allowed and backordered. They assumed all customers tend to wait for new procurement when there is a shortage. Lin and Yeh (2010) have considered a simple single-vendor, single-buyer supply chain, in which ordering lead time is affected by purchasing price discounts which in turn are affected by the vendors pricing policy. They developed a mathematical model to reveal that how the best supply chain system benefit can be achieved through coordinating the buyers ordering lead time and the vendors pricing policy. Ho et al. (2011) have investigated the integrated vendor-buyer inventory model in which each of the received buyers order lot contains a random percentage of defective items, and the lead-time demands have a normal distribution. They formulated an integrated inventory model, in which the order quantity, reorder point and the number of shipments from the vendor to the buyer are decision variables. Lin (2011) has presented a two-warehouse inventory model for products with imperfect quality and all-unit quantity discounts. Two levels of storage, owned-warehouse and rented warehouse, were considered in that study. When in the supply chain, retailer faces to multi suppliers, in this situation, supplier selection is an important issue. Basnet and Leung (2005) have presented a multi-period inventory lot-sizing approach, where there are multiple products and multiple suppliers. They assumed that demand of multiple discrete items is known. They considered that the decision maker needs to decide what products to order in what quantities with which suppliers in which periods. Liao and Rittscher (2007) have developed a multi-objective programming model, which integrates the supplier selection, lot sizing and distributor selection decisions for purchasing a single item over

multiple planning periods while demand quantities are known but inconstant. Mendoza and Ventura (2010) have expressed a model that simultaneously, considers the inventory control and supplier selection problems. They determined an optimal inventory policy to coordinate the distribution of products between sequential stages while allocates orders to selected suppliers in stage 1 properly. Zhang and Zhang (2011) have considered a supplier selection and purchase problems under stochastic demand. The assumed objective was to select suppliers who have a restriction on maximum and minimum order amounts and to allocate the order quantities among the selected suppliers properly to minimize the total cost. Rezaei and Davoodi (2011) have developed two multi-objective mixed integer non-linear models for multi-period lot-sizing problems that involve multiple products and multiple suppliers. They supposed that ordering cost is a function of order frequency-dependent function while total quality and service level are time-dependent functions. Zhou et al. (2011) have considered a supply chain with a retailer and a set of candidate suppliers that operate within a finite planning horizon of multiple periods. An optimization problem was formulated to minimize the total expected system costs. Mendoza and Ventura (2012) have proposed two mixed integer nonlinear programming models for selecting the best collection of suppliers and for determining the suitable allocation with quality and capacity constraints in order to minimize the total cost. 3. Modeling In this section, the proposed model is formulated. For formulating this model, the used assumptions and notations are introduced and then; the mathematical model is formulated. 3.1. Notations and Assumptions The following assumptions are used: 1. The order lead time between the suppliers and the retailer is negligible. 2. Shortage is allowed. 3. The order sizes should be in discrete amounts. 4. Demand of each product is known but is dynamic. 5. Transaction cost for each supplier is not dependent on the variety and quantity of the involved products. Moreover, the following notations are used:

75

Setak and Gorji Optimal Order Allocation and Supplier Selection with Imperfect Quality Products and Financial Constraint

i: index for products (i: 1, 2, . . . , m). j: index for suppliers (j: 1, 2, . . . , n). Xij The allocated order quantity of product i to supplier j. Oj Transaction cost for supplier j. h Fixed holding cost of each product, that is not dependent on the kind of products. Di Demand of product i. Pij Average percentage of product i with imperfect quality in each lot received from supplier j. bij Purchase price of product i from supplier j. Sgi Sale price per unit of product i with good quality. Sdi Sale price per unit of product i with imperfect quality. Explicitly Sgi >Sdi. vi Inspection cost per unit of product i. Cij Supply capacity of supplier j for product i. wi Required storage space for product i. W The total amount of available storage space. li Lost sale cost for each unit of product i. br Initial capital of the retailer.

F Extra capital borrowed from the external financial markets. r Rate of return for capital borrowed from the external financial markets. k Holding cost coefficient for each product that is depended on the product purchase price. Yj A binary variable which if an order is occurred to supplier j, then the value of this variable is 1 and on the otherwise, is 0. 3.2. Mathematical modeling Based on the above assumptions, the following mathematical model is developed. For determining the objective function that is the total profit over the planning horizon, it needs to determine the total revenue and the total cost. Total revenue (TR) is equal to summation of the income from selling products with good quality and products with imperfect quality and is computed based on Eq. (1).

TR Xij (1 Pij ) Sgi Xij Pij Sdi

i j i j

(1)

Total cost (TC) is equal to summation of product purchase, transaction, product inspection, holding of products with good quality, shortage and funding costs. For determining holding and
Inventory Level I (i)

shortage costs, you can consider the Fig 2. It is considered that the demand over the planning horizon is continuously with a constant rate.

t1

t2

Time

qi T

Fig 2. Inventory level over the planning horizon

The following notations are used in Fig 2. I (i): Maximum inventory amount of product i. qi: Amount of lost sales. T: Length of the planning horizon. t1: A fraction of the period that inventory is held. t2: A fraction of the period that the retailer faces to shortage.

So, the maximum inventory amount of product i is calculated according to Eq. (2).

I (i ) Xij (1 Pij )
j

(2)

Based on Fig 2 holding cost is a fraction of the period which each product is held. Then,

76

Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research, 1(12), pp. 73-82, 2012

holding cost of product i is computed based on Eq.

(3).

Xij (1 Pij ) Xij (1 Pij ) Xij (1 Pij ) t1 (bij k h) (bij k h) 2 2 Di j

(3)

Therefore, the total holding cost of all products is calculated according to Eq. (4).

i j

( Xij(1 Pij )) (bij k h) 2 Di

2

(4)

The retailer incurs shortage cost for the unfulfilled demand. So, shortage cost of product i is determined based on Eq. (5).

( Di Xij (1 Pij )) li
j

(5)

Therefore, the total shortage cost of all products is calculated according to Eq. (6).

( Di Xij (1 Pij )) li
i j

(6)

Thereby, the total cost is computed based on Eq. (7).

TC Xij bij Oj Yj Xij vi

i j j i j i j

( Xij(1 Pij )) (bij k h) 2 Di

2

( Di Xij (1 Pij )) li F (1 r )
i j

(7)

Finally, the total profit over the planning horizon is equal to TR TC and is calculated according to Eq. (8).

TR TC Xij (1 Pij ) Sgi Xij Pij Sdi Xij bij Oj Yj

i j 2 i j i j j

Xij vi
i j i j

( Xij(1 Pij )) (bij k h) ( Di Xij (1 Pij )) li F (1 r ) i j 2 Di

(8)

The problem is to determine the quantity of product i that should be ordered to supplier j for maximizing the total profit function according to Max:

the considered constraints. Now we can formulate the developed model.

Xij (1 Pij ) Sgi Xij Pij Sdi Xij bij Oj Yj Xij vi

i j 2 i j i j j i j

i j

( Xij(1 Pij )) (bij k h) ( Di Xij (1 Pij )) li F (1 r ) i j 2 Di

(9)

Subject to:

Di Yj Xij (1 Pij ) 0 For all i, j (10) (11) wi ( Xij (1 Pij )) W

i j

77

Setak and Gorji Optimal Order Allocation and Supplier Selection with Imperfect Quality Products and Financial Constraint

Xij bij br F
i j

(12)
For all i

Di Xij (1 Pij ) 0
j

(13)

0 Xij Cij For all i, j Yj [0,1] For all j (16) F 0

There are 5 constraints for this objective function. 1. All orders have transaction cost: (Eq. 10). Total available storage space is limited: (Eq. 11). 2. The retailer has a financial constraint: (Eq. 12). 3. Summation of all orders must be less than its demand: (Eq. 13). 4. The suppliers have limited capacities: (Eq. 14). 4. Numerical Examples In this section, we examine two numerical examples to reveal the efficiency of the developed model. 4.1. Numerical Example No.1 In this example, a two-level supply chain is considered including a retailer and five suppliers. It
Product 1 2 3 4 Transaction Cost

(14) (15)

is assumed that the retailer should make a decision about ordering four products. Purchase price of the products and ordering cost for each supplier are presented in table 1. Average percentage of imperfect quality items and supply capacity of each supplier for each product are provided in tables 2 and 3. Also, the demand level for each product, sale price of good and imperfect quality products, cost of the inspection process, required space and shortage cost for each unit of the product are shown in table 4. In this example, it is assumed that the initial capital of the retailer is 3,000 units, and the total space is 4,500 units. Moreover, fixed holding cost for each unit product is 0.12 and price-dependent holding coefficient for each product is 0.07.

Table 1: Purchase prices and relative ordering costs. Supplier 1 2 3 12 11 13 14 13 13 13 12 13 12 10 12 7 7 5

4 13 12 12 13 9

5 11 13 13 12 8

Product 1 2 3 4

Table 2: The average percentage of imperfect quality items. Supplier 1 2 3 4 10 11 11 10 10 11 11 11 12 10 10 10 11 10 11 12 Table 3: Supply capacity of each supplier.

5 12 12 10 11

Product 1 2 3 4

Supplier 1 79 73 83 73

2 76 88 73 71

3 80 80 86 76

4 83 71 73 73

5 86 88 76 79

78

Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research, 1(12), pp. 73-82, 2012

Table 4. Demand levels, sale prices, inspection and lost sale costs and holding space per unit for each product. Product Parameter 1 2 3 4 D 300 340 130 30 Sg 22 25 30 31 Sd 21 16 14 16 v 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.02 w 5 6 7 5 l 2.75 2.65 2.45 2.85

Considering the above assumptions and figures, the proposed model is executed for different amounts of rate of return (0.10, 0.15 and 0.20) by BONMIN solver (http://www.coinor.org/Bonmin/). So, the obtained order quantity of product i to supplier j are presented in tables 5, 6

and 7. In this way, the retailer can make a decision about which products, with which quantities and to which suppliers should he order and how much capital should be borrowed for maximizing the total expected profit.

Product 1 2 3 4 Objective Value

Table 5: Order quantities, objective value and needed extra capital (r = 0.10). Supplier 1 2 3 4 0 76 0 0 0 0 0 71 0 72 0 72 0 33 0 0 2,428.74 F Value 1,692

5 86 0 0 0

Product 1 2 3 4 Objective Value

Table 6: Order quantities, objective value and needed extra capital (r = 0.15). Supplier 1 2 3 4 0 76 0 0 0 0 0 71 0 72 0 72 0 33 0 0 2,344.14 F Value 1,692

5 86 0 0 0

Product 1 2 3 4 Objective Value

Table 7: Order quantities, objective value and needed extra capital (r = 0.20). Supplier 1 2 3 4 0 66 0 0 0 0 0 18 0 72 0 72 0 33 0 0 2,309.27 F Value 0

5 0 0 0 0

As you see, the net profit (objective function value) is greater than zero, so investment in this environment is economic. However, if by considering the assumed parameters, then the net profit of the retailer be less than zero, so investment is non-economic. In order to show the

mathematical model performance, the model is run based on different problem sizes with different storage spaces and initial capitals. The problem (i,j) is derived from the top of (i,j) sub matrices of the generated data sets, and the capital rate of return is 0.15. The results are indicated in table 8.

79

Setak and Gorji Optimal Order Allocation and Supplier Selection with Imperfect Quality Products and Financial Constraint Table 8: Performance of the mathematical model for different problems. Problem size Storage Initial Objective Run time F (i,j) space capital value (second) (2,2) 2,000 2,000 0 420.33 3.82 (3,3) 3,000 2,000 635 755.52 1.48 (3,4) 3,500 2,500 916 1,500.8 5.46 (4,4) 4,500 3,000 746 2,326.13 5.19 (4,5) 4,500 3,000 1,692 2,344.13 10.62

As seen in table 8, by increasing the problem sizes, the computational time of the model does not increase effectively. So the mathematical model can solve the problem with larger scale in a reasonably run time. 4.2. Numerical Example No. 2 The goal of this example is to explain the method of obtaining the minimum and maximum amounts of required initial capital for the retailer to have a profitable operation. In some cases, the retailer may want to make a decision about the maximum and minimum required capital in order to have a

desirable operation while he can finance the shortage of his capital from financial markets under a certain rate of return. Thus, in this example, the initial capital quantity is a decision variable, and its quantity is identified by using sensitivity analysis. The amounts of the model parameters are considered according to the previous example. It is assumed that the capital rate of return is 0.30. As you see in table 9, to obtain the minimum required capital, the model is executed for different quantities of the initial capital. So, the amount of initial capital, which the obtained interest is equal to zero, is considered as the minimum required capital.

Table 9: Objective value and the amount of borrowed capital for different initial capitals (r=0.30). Step No. Parameter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 br 1,000 1,100 1,125 1,130 1,140 1,150 1,250 1,500 F 1,058 958 933 928 918 908 808 558 Objective Value -179.46 -49.46 -16.96 -10.46 2.54 15.54 145.54 470.54

Thereby, as you observe in table 9, the minimum required capital is almost equal to 1,140 units. There are two ways to obtain the maximum required capital. The first method is similar to the minimum required capital technique. So a sensitivity analysis should be performed to obtain the maximum required capital. The second method assumes that the retailers initial capital is a decision variable. Therefore, you should omit the finance cost expression from the target function. Moreover, the parameter F should be omitted from Eq. (12). Therefore, the quantity of the maximum required capital, in order to achieve the maximum interest is obtained. Here, we use the second method to calculate the maximum needed capital. So, the maximum amount of initial capital to achieve the maximum amount of objective function value is 10,736 units and the maximum objective value that the retailer can obtain is 10,077.62 units. 5. Conclusion We considered a two-level supply chain with one retailer and a set of suppliers. It was considered

that the received products dependent on suppliers contain a certain percentage of imperfect quality items and have different prices. The impact of financial and maximum storage space constraints were investigated on the allocation of the optimal order quantities between the suppliers who have limited capacities for supply. With two examples, it was demonstrated that in the assumed situation and with the proposed model, the retailer can decide about what products should be ordered in what quantities to which suppliers and how much capital should be borrowed for maximizing the total profit. We revealed that with the proposed model, the decision maker can determine the minimum and maximum initial capital for the minimum and maximum objective value that investment in the supposed market be economic. Moreover, he can decide about that investing in the assumed commerce is economic or non-economic. It was demonstrated that the mathematical model can solve the problem in a reasonably run time. As seen in table 8, the mathematical model is used only for medium and large scale problems. So, for very large scale problems, innovative methods should be used for the proposed model. This model

80

Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research, 1(12), pp. 73-82, 2012

can be applied to any quantity decision where the choice is based on maximizing the total profit associated with that decision. Further researches can be extended by considering that the demand rate is price sensitive. Also it can be considered that the financial markets have a limited capacity for lending the needed capital and the rate of return from a market to another market is different. Thus, the developed model is closer to the real applications. REFERENCES Basnet C, Leung JMY (2005). Inventory lot sizing with supplier selection. Computers & Operations Research, 32: 1-14. Chan WM, Ibrahim RN, Lochert PB (2003). A new EPQ model: integrating lower pricing, rework and reject situations. Production Planning and Control: The Management of Operations, 14: 588-595. Chiu YP (2003). Determining the optimal lot size for the finite production model with random defective rate, the rework process and backlogging. Engineering Optimization, 35: 427-437. Freimer M, Thomas D, Tyworth J (2006). The value of setup cost reduction and process improvement for the economic production quantity model with defects. European Journal of Operational Research, 173: 241251. Goyal SK, Huang CK, Chen KC (2003). A simple integrated production policy of an imperfect item for vendor and buyer. Production Planning and Control: The Management of Operations, 14: 596-602. Hayek PA, Salameh MK (2001). Production lot sizing with the reworking of imperfect quality items produced. Production Planning and Control: The Management of Operations, 12: 584-590. Ho CH, Goyal SK, Ouyang LY, Wu KS (2011). An integrated vendor-buyer inventory model with defective items and partial backlogging. International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 8: 377 391. Liao Z, Rittscher J (2007). Integration of supplier selection, procurement lot sizing and carrier selection under dynamic demand conditions. International Journal of Production Economics, 107: 502-510. Lin TY (2011). A supply chain model with defective items and disposal cost in a just-in-

time (JIT) environment. African Journal of Business Management, 5: 6124-6131. Lin TY, yeh DH (2010). An optimal coordination policy for supply chain system under imperfect quality consideration. Journal of Marine Science and Technology, 18: 449457. Mendoza A, Ventura JA (2010). A serial inventory system with supplier selection and order quantity allocation. European Journal of Operational Research, 207: 1304-1315. Mendoza A, Ventura JA (2012). Analytical models for supplier selection and order quantity allocation. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 36: 3826-3835. Ouyang LY, Chang HC (2000). Impact of investing in quality improvement on (q, r, l) model involving the imperfect production process. Production Planning & Control: The Management of Operations, 11: 598607. Porteus EL (1986). Optimal lot sizing, process quality improvement and setup cost reduction. Operations Research, 34: 137144. Rezaei J, Davoodi M (2008). A deterministic multi-item inventory model with supplier selection and imperfect quality. Applied Mathematical Modeling, 32: 2106-2116. Rezaei J, Davoodi M (2011). Multi objective models for lot-sizing with supplier selection. International Journal of Production Economics, 130: 77-86. Rosenblatt MJ, Lee HL (1986). Economic production cycles with imperfect production processes. IIE Transactions, 18: 48-55. Salameh MK, Jaber MY (2000). Economic production quantity model for items with imperfect quality. International Journal of Production Economics, 64: 59-64. Singh SR, Singh AP, Bhatia D (2010). A supply chain model with variable holding cost for flexible manufacturing system. International Journal of Operations Research and Optimization, 1: 107-120. Wee HM, Yu J, Chen MC (2007). Optimal inventory model for items with imperfect quality and shortage backordering. Omega, 35: 7-11. Zhang JL, Zhang MY (2011). Supplier selection and purchase problem with fixed cost and constrained order quantities under stochastic demand. International Journal of Production Economics, 129: 1-7.

81

Setak and Gorji Optimal Order Allocation and Supplier Selection with Imperfect Quality Products and Financial Constraint

Zhou Y, Zhao L, Zhao X, Jiang J (2011). A supplier selection and order allocation problem with stochastic demands.

International Journal of Systems Science, 42: 1323-1338.

82