A simple heuristic for echelon (r,nQ,T)(r,nQ,T) policies in serial supply chains

This paper proposes a simple heuristic that generates a solution for echelon (r,nQ,T)(r,nQ,T) policies by sequentially solving a deterministic demand problem, a subproblem with fixed reorder intervals, and a subproblem with fixed batch sizes. For each of these problems, we further simplify the computation by solving a series of single-stage systems whose parameters are obtained directly from the original problem data. In a numerical study, we find that this heuristic outperforms an existing one in the literature.