A Co-Ordinated Single-Vendor Multi-Buyer Supply Chain Model

his chapter considers the co-ordination in a single-vendor multi-buyer supply chain by synchronising ordering and production cycles. The synchronisation is achieved by scheduling the actual ordering days of the buyers and co-ordinating it with the vendor’s production cycle whilst allowing the buyers to choose their own lot sizes and order cycle. A mathematical model for our proposed co-ordination is developed and analysed. Our results show that the synchronised cycles policy works better than independent optimisation or restricting buyers to adopt a common order cycle. Some illustrative examples demonstrate that there are circumstances where both the vendor and the buyers gain from such synchronisation without the need for price and quantity discount incentives.