Integrated inventory model for deteriorating items under a multi-echelon supply chain environment

As the industrial environment becomes more competitive, supply chain management has become essential. The objective of this research is to develop a multi-echelon inventory model for a deteriorating item and to derive an optimal joint total cost from an integrated perspective among the supplier, the producer, and the buyer. A computer code is developed to derive the optimal solution. A numerical example is given to illustrate the model. This paper shows that the integrated approach strategy results in the lowest joint total cost as compared with the independent decision approaches.