A cost- effective collaborative inventory management strategy between non-competitor companies - A case study

This paper introduces a collaborative strategy in the supply chain that demonstrates potential to reduce management inventory costs, through the coordinated replenishment of multiple items from noncompetitors vendors. The proposed approach is an extension of the classical joint replenishment problem (JRP) denominated as stochastic collaborative joint replenishment problem (S-CJRP) since considers normally distributed demand and real world constraints. This research presents two main problems: the first consists in determining the frequency in which each vendor should replenish its products considering a limited transport and storage capacity. A heuristic procedure has been used as effective methodology for solve it. The second problem deals with the problem of allocate the benefits given by the collaboration in a viable and stable way. This problem was modeled as a cooperative game for ensuring fairness among participants. The Shapley Value was used as a method for allocation, which allows a balance between the contribution and gain sharing for the players. A study case is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of this strategy, providing economics benefits.