Inventory ordering policies for mixed sale of products under inspection policy, multiple prepayment, partial trade credit, payments linked to order quantity and full backordering

The situation where serviceable products are sold together with a proportion of deteriorating products to consumers is rarely discussed in the literature. This article proposes an inventory model with disparate inventory ordering policies under a situation where a portion of serviceable products and a portion of deteriorating products are sold together to consumers (i.e. mixed sales). The ordering policies consider a hybrid payment strategy with multiple prepayment and partial trade credit schemes linked to order quantity under situations where no inventory shortage is allowed and inventory shortage is allowed with full backorder. The hybrid payment policy offered by a supplier is introduced into the classical economic ordering quantity model to investigate the optimal inventory cycle and the fraction of demand that is filled from the deteriorating products under inspection policy. Further, a new solution method is proposed that identifies optimal annual total profit with mixed sales assuming no inventory shortage and inventory shortage with full backorder. The impact of an inspection policy is investigated on the optimality of the solution under hybrid payment strategies for the deteriorating products. The validation of the proposed model and its solution method is demonstrated through several numerical examples. The results indicate that the inventory model along with the solution method provide a powerful tool to the retail managers under real-world situations. Results demonstrate that it is essential for the managers to consider inclusion of an inspection policy in the mixed sales of products, as the inspection policy significantly increases the net annual profit

A Fuzzy Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) Model with Consideration of Quality Items, Inspection Errors and Sales Return

In this paper, we develop an economic order quantity model with imperfect quality, inspection errors and sales returns, where upon the arrival of order lot, 100% screening process is performed and the items of imperfect quality are sold as a single batch at a lessen price, prior to receiving the next shipment. The screening process to remove the defective items may involve two types of errors. In this article we extend the Khan et al. (2011) model by considering demand and defective rate in fuzzy sense and also sales return in our model. The objective is to determine the optimal order lot size to maximize the total profit. We use the signed distance, a ranking method for fuzzy numbers, to find the approximate of total profit per unit time in the fuzzy sense. The impact of fuzziness of fraction of defectives and demand rate on optimal solution is showed by numerical example

Multi products single machine economic production quantity model with multiple batch size

In this paper, a multi products single machine economic order quantity model with discrete delivery is developed. A unique cycle length is considered for all produced items with an assumption that all products are manufactured on a single machine with a limited capacity. The proposed model considers different items such as production, setup, holding, and transportation costs. The resulted model is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming model. Harmony search algorithm, extended cutting plane and particle swarm optimization methods are used to solve the proposed model. Two numerical examples are used to analyze and to evaluate the performance of the proposed model

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

An inventory system with time-dependent demand and partial backordering under return on inventory investment maximization

Producción CientíficaIn this article, we study an inventory system for items that have a power demand pattern and where shortages are allowed. We suppose that only a fixed proportion of demand during the stock-out period is backordered. The decision variables are the inventory cycle and the ratio between the initial stock and the total quantity demanded throughout the inventory cycle. The objective is to maximize the Return on Inventory Investment (ROII) defined as the ratio of the profit per unit time over the average inventory cost. After analyzing the objective function, the optimal global solutions for all the possible cases of the inventory problem are determined. These optimal policies that maximize the ROII are, in general, different from those that minimize the total inventory cost per unit time. Finally, a numerical sensitivity analysis of the optimal inventory policy with respect to the system input parameters and some useful managerial insights derived from the results are presented.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades - Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (project MTM2017-84150-P

Low Carbon Economic Production Quantity Model for Imperfect Quality Deteriorating Items

This paper presents an economic production quantity (EPQ) model for deteriorating items with a certain percentage of defective products due to an imperfect process. The defective products are sold to a secondary market at a discount price. Due to environmental concern and carbon tax regulation, the manufacturer incorporates the control of carbon emission cost into its decision model. Carbon emission cost is a function of electricity consumption during production and inventory storage; it is also dependent on the carbon tax rate. Since the production process results in work-in-process inventory and carbon emission, the study tries to optimize the throughput time. We also examine the effect of carbon tax regulation on the potential emission reduction from the developed deteriorating item model. A numerical example and sensitivity analysis have been provided, and the result confirms the influence of carbon tax regulation in reducing carbon emission

Responsible Inventory Models for Operation and Logistics Management

The industrialization and the subsequent economic development occurred in the last century have led industrialized societies to pursue increasingly higher economic and financial goals, laying temporarily aside the safeguard of the environment and the defense of human health. However, over the last decade, modern societies have begun to reconsider the importance of social and environmental issues nearby the economic and financial goals. In the real industrial environment as well as in today research activities, new concepts have been introduced, such as sustainable development (SD), green supply chain and ergonomics of the workplace. The notion of “triple bottom line” (3BL) accounting has become increasingly important in industrial management over the last few years (Norman and MacDonald, 2004). The main idea behind the 3BL paradigm is that companies’ ultimate success should not be measured only by the traditional financial results, but also by their ethical and environmental performances. Social and environmental responsibility is essential because a healthy society cannot be achieved and maintained if the population is in poor health. The increasing interest in sustainable development spurs companies and researchers to treat operations management and logistics decisions as a whole by integrating economic, environmental, and social goals (Bouchery et al., 2012). Because of the wideness of the field under consideration, this Ph.D. thesis focuses on a restricted selection of topics, that is Inventory Management and in particular the Lot Sizing problem. The lot sizing problem is undoubtedly one of the most traditional operations management interests, so much so that the first research about lot sizing has been faced more than one century ago (Harris, 1913). The main objectives of this thesis are listed below: 1) The study and the detailed analysis of the existing literature concerning Inventory Management and Lot Sizing, supporting the management of production and logistics activities. In particular, this thesis aims to highlight the different factors and decision-making approaches behind the existing models in the literature. Moreover, it develops a conceptual framework identifying the associated sub-problems, the decision variables and the sources of sustainable achievement in the logistics decisions. The last part of the literature analysis outlines the requirements for future researches. 2) The development of new computational models supporting the Inventory Management and Sustainable Lot Sizing. As a result, an integrated methodological procedure has been developed by making a complete mathematical modeling of the Sustainable Lot Sizing problem. Such a method has been properly validated with data derived from real cases. 3) Understanding and applying the multi-objective optimization techniques, in order to analyze the economic, environmental and social impacts derived from choices concerning the supply, transport and management of incoming materials to a production system. 4) The analysis of the feasibility and convenience of governmental systems of incentives to promote the reduction of emissions owing to the procurement and storage of purchasing materials. A new method based on the multi-objective theory is presented by applying the models developed and by conducting a sensitivity analysis. This method is able to quantify the effectiveness of carbon reduction incentives on varying the input parameters of the problem. 5) Extending the method developed in the first part of the research for the “Single-buyer” case in a "multi-buyer" optics, by introducing the possibility of Horizontal Cooperation. A kind of cooperation among companies in different stages of the purchasing and transportation of raw materials and components on a global scale is the Haulage Sharing approach which is here taken into consideration in depth. This research was supported by a fruitful collaboration with Prof. Robert W. Grubbström (University of Linkoping, Sweden) and its aim has been from the beginning to make a breakthrough both in the theoretical basis concerning sustainable Lot Sizing, and in the subsequent practical application in today industrial contexts