Diseño de un sistema de control de inventario de una tienda de juguetes

The objective of this article was to design an inventory control system for a toy store in Puyo, Ecuador. Between November 2018 and February 2019, we characterized the actual situation of inventory management in the company in the first stage of the research; in the second stage, we designed the inventory system. For the analysis and design of the inventory management system of the toy store we combined two procedures, one unrelated to the characterization of the existing inventory system and the other related to inventory planning. We identified that the merchandise in the store was not codified and that the store lacked a storage system for its merchandise. We discovered that the stock available could not be identified. In addition, we determined the inventory parameters as a basis for the design of the automated system. An adequate inventory management will guarantee a timely supply of sales products and the minimization of the total cost of logistics activities in inventory control, ensuring better profitability and customer service.El objetivo de este artículo fue diseñar un sistema de control de inventario de una tienda de juguetes de la ciudad de Puyo, Ecuador. Entre noviembre de 2018 y febrero de 2019, se realizó una etapa de caracterización de la situación real de la gestión de inventario en la empresa y otra etapa de diseño del sistema de inventario. Para el análisis y diseño del sistema de gestión de inventario de la juguetería se combinaron dos procedimientos, uno no relacionado con la caracterización del sistema de inventario existente y otro relacionado con la planificación del inventario. Se encontró que en la empresa mercadería no se encuentra codificada, que no cuenta con un sistema de almacenamiento que facilite su organización y no se pudo identificar el stock del que se disponía. Además, se determinaron los parámetros de inventario como base para el diseño del sistema automatizado. A partir de una adecuada gestión de inventario, se garantizará un abastecimiento oportuno de los productos de venta y la minimización del costo total de las actividades logísticas en el control de inventario, lo que asegurará mayor rentabilidad y mejor atención al cliente

Two-Echelon Lot-Sizing with Asymmetric Information and Continuous Type Space

We analyse a two-echelon discrete lot-sizing problem with a supplier and a retailer under information asymmetry. We assume that all cost parameters are time independent and that the retailer has single-dimensional continuous private information, namely either his setup cost or his holding cost. The supplier uses mechanism design to determine a menu of contracts that minimises his expected costs, where each contract specifies the retailer's procurement plan and a side payment to the retailer. There is no restriction on the number of contracts in the menu. To optimally solve this contracting problem we present a two-stage approach, based on a theoretical analysis. The first stage generates a list of procurement plans that is sufficient to solve the contracting problem to optimality. The second stage optimally assigns these plans to the retailer types and determines all side payments. The result is an optimal menu with finitely many contracts that pools retailer types. We identify cases for which the contracting problem can be solved in polynomial time and provide the corresponding algorithms. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that information asymmetry leads to atypical structures in the plans of the optimal menu, e.g., plans violating the zero-inventory property. Our solution approach and several results are directly applicable to more general problems as well