Interval valued demand and prepayment-based inventory model for perishable items via parametric approach of interval and meta-heuristic algorithms

Abstract

This work mainly focuses on the mathematical formulation of an imprecise inventory model with partial prepayment policy in interval environment. In the proposed model, two different cases (without shortage and with partially backlogged shortages) are taken into consideration. Here, the demand and deterioration rates are considered as interval valued. Also, all the inventory costs, viz. ordering cost, purchase cost, holding cost, shortage cost and lost sale cost are considered as interval valued. Then, the continuous change of inventory level with time of the proposed model is defined mathematically by the interval differential equations. For both cases of the proposed model, the interval valued average profits are obtained by using parametric approach of interval. Here, the selling price and business period are taken as decision variables of the corresponding interval maximization problem. Finally, two numerical examples are considered and solved by using different meta-heuristic algorithms for checking the validity of the proposed model.