An effective heuristic for the two-level vendor-managed inventory problem in a supermarket chain

Graphical/Tabular Abstract The supermarket chain discussed in this study addresses middle class customers in Turkey with 20 distribution centers (DC) and 3500 stores in 72 provinces. An average of 1500 items are sold in each store of the company. There is a great fluctuation in the demand from stores to DCs due to factors such as the presence of promotional products, seasonality and trends. Figure A shows the change in order quantity (in terms of pallets) between June and September when a store moves to its DC. In this study, the problem of creating a shipment plan for DCs is discussed in order to minimize these negative effects of variability.