Vendor managed inventory with fixed shipping cost allocation

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effectiveness of a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) system in a decentralised supply chain. Specifically, a two-tier supply chain with one vendor and multiple buyers is analysed under two replenishment models – an LMI system and a VMI system with vendor coordination that includes retailer incentives and cross-docking at the vendor. The impact of supply chain design parameters (number of retailers and retailer heterogeneity), and a policy parameter (shipment frequency) on the effectiveness of the VMI system is studied. Using an analytical model as well as numerical experiments, we find that incentive-aligned contractual arrangements can be made between the vendor and the retailers through reallocation of fixed shipping cost savings arising from VMI.

KEYWORDS:

• Vendor-managed inventory (VMI)
• locally-managed inventory (LMI)
• collaborative replenishment
• incentives

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Joong Y. Son http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9454-8891