Multi‐Item Inventory Models with Co‐ordinated Replenishments: A Survey

In a multi‐item environment with a joint set‐up cost structure considerable savings may be realised by co‐ordinating the replenishments. This article presents a unified survey of the inventory control literature designed to capture the models that fit in this frame. In general these models are complex and require a great deal of computational effort to obtain an exact solution. The literature relies mainly on heuristic procedures.