Sorry, I can not help you. My studies are mostly about management. 

Dear Flavio, from what I understand, you are going to apply some technology you have developed on multi-echelon inventory systems in a pilot demonstration. I am not so sure what you mean by "functional advice". If you mean assistance with software development and engineering (getting functional and other requirements, creating use-cases, designing an architecture, coming up with a decomposition of the system into its process models, data models etc., and then eventually writing the software to meet the goals of the pilot), then you probably need some help from either a small external consulting firm specializing in software development (would be good if some analysts had an OR/OM background too), or alternatively, from some researchers in your team that are also good in writing software.

If you need help with the "operational" aspects of the pilot, it's another story: for example, probably your models have some backorder costs measured in your inventories, or else maybe you have some service levels constraints, or even worse, in case you're dealing with distribution multi-echelon systems, you need to figure out what rules to apply in your pilot so that you will be distributing your upper echelon's inventories among the lower-level ones (fair-share or I don't know what else...) For such cases, you probably need to sit very closely with the client where you will be installing your pilot, and figure out what/how they view their operations, which usually is very far from the theoretical models that academics/mathematicians come up with. So, in such a case, you shouldn't be looking for help in an academic environment: In the end, your pilot's owner (your user) should be the one who's right :-)

I wish you best success with your project which sounds very exciting!.

Dear Ioannis, thanks for your answer. My concern is not about the sw development and engineering for which we have a competent team. Since we are going to develop a not client dependent approach and tool (even if implemented and tested over a pilot case or more) we need advises from other people already experienced MEIO. I'm looking into the academic environment because the team is mainly composed by industrial people ... but industrial application of MEIO is very poor in theory and in practice.

I also red the book on MEIO from Shaun Snapp. Very interesting even if from industrial and conceptual side views only.

Regards

Flavio

Hi again Flavio! Thanks for your clarification. So, what exactly is it that you are looking for, from academics working on MEIO? are you looking for literature pointers, or theoretical modeling? or algorithmic design?

A person that comes to my mind immediately is Prof. A.G. Lagodimos ([email protected]) with whom I have collaborated and written a few papers on stochastic inventory control and optimization, who has worked a lot on multi-echelon supply chains, both from a theoretical view-point as well as from industrial (before joining the University of Piraeus, Lagodimos was a general manager of production at one of the largest mills in Greece, and has many years of experience in managing inventories in large mfg firms in Greece). He's also on ResearchGate (search him). If you think his profile fits you, feel free to contact him directly.

Best Wishes for your project again!

Ioannis

PS: My two cents of opinion (for whatever it's worth): (1) As you are developing your tool, make sure to have a look at what kind of UI other tools are offering such as SAP APO etc. (2) Also, try to make it as interoperable with other systems as possible (SAP etc.), so as to be "easy" for future clients to integrate to their systems as well.

you can find it in inventory problems in SCM area such as VMI or IRP approaches. To provide a software you need to someone who has experiences in inventory control in SCM field.

Thanks Javad

The sw itself is not a problem since we have the support of a software laboratory of a software vendor in this field. And also the algorithm part is not a problem since my research group have worked on that.

The problem is working on specific MEIO application with real case cases and practices. To do that we need to acquire some experience on this from Companies or Researchers working on that. 

Dear Flavio,

I have made a quick search on Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization (MEIO).

It is really strange to find only 28 papers who dealt with MEIO.

I have chosen 14 of them.

1. Article: Simulation-based optimisation of multi-echelon inventory systems

P. Köchel, U. Nieländer

International Journal of Production Economics 02/2005; · 2.08 Impact Factor

2. Article: Impact of inventory allocation policies on downstream supply variability in a two echelon system

Suman Niranjan, Frank W Ciarallo

Int. J. Business Performance and Supply Chain Modelling. 09/2013; 5(4):401-429.

3. Thesis: Evolving multi-echelon supply chain inventory and ordering policies using biologically inspired grammar based meta-heuristics

Michael Phelan

01/2014, Degree: Doctor of Philosophy, Supervisor: Dr Seán McGarraghy

4. Article: Delivery Delay Variation in Multi-Echelon Inventory Problems

Gregory A.Graman, David F. Rogers

Journal of the Operational Research Society 01/1997; 48:1029-1036. · 0.99 Impact Factor

5. Article: Inventory Valuation in Multi-echelon Production/Distribution Systems

Rui Fernandes, Borges Gouveia, Carlos Pinho

International Journal of Production Research 01/2012; · 1.46 Impact Factor

6. Article: Inventory minimisation by service level optimisation for increased freshness and availability to end consumer in a multi echelon system: FMCG case

Sanjay Sharma, Amit Singh Sengar

Int. J. of Applied Management Science. 01/2012; 4(2):ied Management Science.

7. Article: Setting expediting repair policy in a multi-echelon repairable-item inventory system with limited repair capacity

Y Perlman, A Mehrez, M Kaspi

Journal of the Operational Research Society 01/2001; 52(2):198-209. · 0.99 Impact Factor

8. Article: Modelling Approaches to Optimise Spares in Multi-echelon Systems

Angel Diaz

International Journal of Logistics 01/2003; 6(1-2):51-62. · 0.48 Impact Factor

9. Article: Multi echelon spare parts inventory optimisation: a simulative study

Simone Zanoni, Ivan Ferretti, Lucio Zavanella

2005

10. Article: Integrated Production-Inventory-Distribution Optimization in a Multi-echelon, Multi-product, Multi-carrier, Multi-period System

Xu Yang, Sunderesh S. Heragu, Gerald W. Evans

International Journal of Value Chain Management 06/2010; 4(3):267-287.

11. Article: Multi-Echelon Repairable Item Inventory System with Limited Repair Capacity under Nonstationary Demands

Hoong Chuin LAU, Huawei Song

International Journal of Inventory Research 01/2008; 1(1).

12. Article: Effect of forecasting on the multi‐echelon distribution inventory supply chain cost using neural network, genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimisation

A. Noorul Haq, G. Kannan

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics 07/2006;

13. Article: A two-layered optimisation-based control strategy for multi-echelon supply chain networks.

Panos Seferlis, Nikolaos F. Giannelos

Computers & Chemical Engineering 01/2004; 28:799-809. · 2.09 Impact Factor

14. Article: A two-layered optimisation-based control strategy for multi-echelon supply chain networks

P. Seferlis, N.F. Giannelos

Computer Aided Chemical Engineering

Please note I have defended my second master degree on Industrial Engineering and Systems Management in 2000. My knowledge with quick glance to the existing literature up-to-date shows me that your proposal is an innovation in MEIO. You are looking for the practical part as an evaluation procedures. You can have a look to those articles and contact them for their on-place results if there is any.

I had that experience, when I wanted to compare my results with others, I barely found any person in that area.

Warmest regards, Azniv

What about using Pipeline Hedging technique in multi-echelon inventory optimization. This is covered in the work by Kenneth Baker