Supply chain finance for ameliorating and deteriorating products: a systematic literature review

Ameliorating and deteriorating products, or, more generally, items that change value over time, present a high sensitiveness to the surrounding environment (e.g., temperature, humidity, and light intensity). For this reason, they should be properly stored along the supply chain to guarantee the desired quality to the consumers. Specifically, ameliorating items face an increase in value if there are stored for longer periods, which can lead to higher selling price. At the same time, the costumers’ demand is sensitive to the price (i.e., the higher the selling price the lower the final demand), sensitiveness that is related to the quality of the products (i.e., lower sensitiveness for high-quality products). On the contrary, deteriorating items lose quality and value over time which result in revenue losses due to lost sales or reduced selling price. Since these products need to be properly stored (i.e., usually in temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouses) the holding costs, which comprise also the energy costs, may be particularly relevant impacting on the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of the supply chain. Furthermore, due to the recent economic crisis, companies (especially, small and medium enterprises) face payment difficulties of customers and high volatility of resources prices. This increases the risk of insolvency and on the other hand the financing needs. In this context, supply chain finance emerged as a mean for efficiency by coordinating the financial flow and providing a set of financial schemes aiming at optimizing accounts payable and receivable along the supply chain. The aim of the present study is thus to investigate through a systematic literature review the two main themes presented (i.e., inventory management models for products that change value over time, and financial techniques and strategies to support companies in inventory management) to understand if any financial technique has been studied for supporting the management of this class of products and to verify the existing literature gap

A fuzzy multi objective inventory model of demand dependent deterioration including lead time

In this article, we have developed a deteriorated multi-item inventory model in a fuzzy environment. Here the demand rate is constant. Production cost and set-up cost are the most vital issue in the inventory system of the market world. Here production cost and set-up- cost are continuous functions of demand. Set-up-cost is also dependent on average inventory level. Deterioration cost is the most challenging issue in the business world. So here deterioration cost is dependent on inventory level and demand. Lead time crashing cost is considered the continuous function of leading time. In the real world all cost are not fixed. Due to uncertainty all cost parameters of the proposed model are taken as Generalized Triangular Fuzzy Number (GTFN). The formulated multi objective inventory problem has been solved by various techniques like as Geometric Programming (GP) technique, Fuzzy Programming Technique with Hyperbolic Membership Function (FPTHMF), Fuzzy Non-Linear Programming (FNLP) technique. Numerical example is taken to illustrate the model. Sensitivity analysis and graphical representation have been shown to test the parameters of the model