The Study of Retail Inventory Strategies under Uncertainties

Supply chain management includes four major elements, namely manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and retailers. Inventory control plays a very important role in each of these four modules in the supply chain. There are many uncertain factors that will influence the accuracy of forecasting. Therefore, we need to investigate the uncertainties during the inventory control for these four different strategies. They are Quick Response (QR) strategy model, Vender Management Inventory (VMI) strategy model, Newsboy strategy model, and Target Weeks Supply strategy model. In each strategy, seven uncertain factors in inventory simulation model are studied. The purpose of this research is to study the retail inventory strategies under uncertainties and the impacts of various uncertainties on these four different strategies and find the most suitable inventory strategy for the apparel retailer. The performances of these four strategy models are also analyzed.