Search for good policies in a single-warehouse, multi-retailer system by particle swarm optimisation

An optimal control of sufficiently realistic single-warehouse, multi-retailer systems (SWMR-systems) requires the simulation optimisation approach. After a brief discussion of modelling and simulation aspects for such systems, we present a simulator providing a sufficiently large set of options to customize it to realistic problem situations. The paper then focuses on the applicability of optimisation algorithms and introduces the methods particle swarm optimisation and threshold accepting. We show that both approaches yield good optimisation results for several examples of a 5-retailer system investigated according to their reordering strategy and transportation resources.