An EPQ-based inventory model for exponentially deteriorating items under retailer partial trade credit policy in supply chain

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimal retailer's replenishment decisions for deteriorating items under two levels of trade credit policy to reflect supply chain management situation within the economic production quantity (EPQ) framework. In this paper, it is assumed that the retailer maintains a powerful decision-making right and can obtain the full trade credit offered by the supplier yet retailer just offers the partial trade credit to his/her customers. Under these conditions, the retailer can obtain the most benefits. Then, we model the retailer's inventory system as a cost minimization problem to determine the retailer's optimal replenishment decisions under the supply chain management. Some easy-to-use theorems are developed to efficiently determine the optimal replenishment decisions for the retailer. We deduce some previously published results of other researchers as special cases. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the theorems obtained in this paper. Then, as well as, we obtain a lot of managerial phenomena from numerical examples. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.