Choosing between two single vendor single buyer integrated production inventory strategies
Résumé
In this paper we deal with the single vendor single buyer integrated production inventory problem. Two production strategies are considered for the vendor. The first one suggests that the buyer orders batches of size nQ and the vendor produces nQ and makes equal shipments of size Q. The second policy proposes that to satisfy the same ordered quantity, the vendor produces separately smaller batches of size Q, n times. Setup cost is adopted as the decision variable for the choice of the best strategy. The total average cost per time unit corresponding to each policy is considered as the performance criterion. The mathematical expressions of this cost are developed for each strategy and a computational procedure is used to determine a threshold value of the setup cost allowing choosing the best policy for any given situation. A generalized comparison between both strategies is also proposed.