Abstract

Inventory management is a fundamental lever of supply chain management. Through effective inventory management, companies can prevent high levels of inventory while providing a good customer service level. With the increased complexity of supply chain nowadays, multi-echelon inventory management has become a challenging and interesting research area. In particular, it considers the entire system as a whole which allows for managing the interdependencies between different stages of the supply chain. Today, solving the multi-echelon inventory management problem with analytical models is not sufficient anymore. Numerous researchers developed simulation models in order to overcome the restrictions of mathematical modeling and to reflect the dynamic behaviors of different parameters involved in multi-echelon inventory systems. This paper provides insights into the use of simulation modeling to assist in making multi-echelon inventory management decisions. A classification of several simulation models of multi-echelon inventory systems according to a set of features used by the literature is established as well.