We consider a single item Production-Inventory-Routing problem with a single producer/supplier and multiple retailers. Inventory management constraints are considered both at the producer and at the retailers, following a vendor managed inventory approach, where the supplier monitors the inventory at retailers and decides on the replenishment policy for each retailer. We assume a constant produ...

Internet technology has allowed for a higher degree of decoupling between the informationintensive sales process and the physical process of inventory management than its brick-and-mortar counterpart. As a result, some Internet retailers choose to outsource inventory and back-end operations in order to focus on the sales/marketing aspects of e-commerce. Nonetheless, many retailers keep fulfillm...

This study considers a quantity discount problem between a single seller (poultry famer) and two buyers (retailers). The poultry farmer’s inventory level increases due to the increase in the weight of the fowls. The retailers purchase fresh chicken meat from the poultry farmer, the inventory levels of the retailers are therefore depleted due to the combined effects of its demand and deteriorati...

This paper investigates the effects of information sharing and early order commitment on the performance of four inventory policies used by retailers in a supply chain of one capacitated supplier and four retailers. Model parameters and operating conditions are emulated from a local business supplying a standard product to its retailers. Through computer simulation and subsequent analyses, we f...

The use of VMI at Wal-Mart on a large scale has attracted a great deal of attention in the industrial world. In a VMI program, the supplier assumes control of the inventory management for one or more retailers (Fry, 2002). The supplier monitors the inventory level at the retailers and makes the decisions related to the quantities of replenishment and the timing of shipments to the retailers. It...

In conventional inventory management, the retailers monitor their own inventory levels and place orders at the distributor when they think it is the appropriate time to reorder. The distributor receives these orders from the retailers, prepares the product for delivery. Similarly, the distributor will place an order at the manufacturer at the

In this paper, we examine a real-world case related to the consumer product supply chain to analyze the value of supply chain coordination under the condition of moral hazard. Because of the characteristics of a buyback contract scheme employed in the supply chain, the supplier company's sales department encourages retailers to order more inventory to meet their sales target, whereas retailers ...

This paper studies supply chain demand variability in a model with one supplier and N retailers that face stochastic demand. Retailers implement scheduled ordering policies: Orders occur at fixed intervals and are equal to some multiple of a fixed batch size. A method is presented that exactly evaluates costs. Previous research demonstrates that the supplier’s demand variance declines as the re...

The inventory system under consideration consists of one central warehouse and an arbitrary number of retailers controlled by a continuous review inventory policy (R;Q). Independent Poisson demands are assumed with constant transportation times for all retailers and a constant lead time for replenishing orders from an external supplier for the warehouse. Unsatis ed demands are assumed to be los...