In the classical inventory systems, the retailer had to settle the accounts of the purchased items at the time they were received. But in practice, the supplier applies some strategic tools, such as trade credit contract, to enhance his sales channel and offers delay period to his customers to settle the account. Any member of the supply chain may offer full or partial trade credit contract to his downstream level. Full trade credit is the case that the latter is allowed to defer the whole payment to the end of the credit period. In partial trade credit, however, the downstream supply chain member must pay for a proportion of the purchased goods at first and can delay paying for the rest until the end of the credit period. This paper considers a two-level trade credit, where the supplier offers order-quantity-dependent partial trade credit to a retailer, who suggests full trade credit to his customers. An economic order quantity (EOQ) inventory model of a deteriorating item is formulated here, and the Branch and Reduce Optimization Navigator is applied to find the optimal replenishment policy. The sensitivity of the variables on different parameters has been analyzed by applying some numerical examples. The data reveal that increasing the credit periods of the retailer and the customers can decrease and increase the retailer’s total cost, respectively.
A simple heuristic policy for stochastic inventory systems with both minimum and maximum order quantity requirements
