Inventory Strategy of Dual-Channel Supply Chain from Manufacturer's Perspective

Abstract

Compared with the traditional retail channel, the online channel has advantages such as wide coverage, low cost and small time limit. Manufacturers with dual channels can increase market share and reduce operating costs. However, the incoordination between channels and the lack of management methods make it difficult to implement the dual-channel supply chain. The supply chain which contains both offline and online sales channels has gradually become an important part of the supply chain research. The inventory management is an important factor influencing enterprise operating cost and supply chain efficiency. As there are many uncertain factors in the supply chain system, inventory management becomes one of the difficulties that manufacturing enterprises face when expanding the online channel. Different from the traditional supply chain inventory control, the dual-channel supply chain inventory management has its own characteristics. From the perspective of manufacturing enterprises, this paper takes the dual-channel supply chain as the research object. The profit models were established under the independent inventory strategy, centralized inventory strategy and a strategy where the online channel is outsourced to a third party. The optimal inventory and maximum profit under different operation modes are solved and compared with each other through numerical simulation analysis. The study provide guidance for inventory management of manufacturing enterprises to reduce operating costs and improve the efficiency of supply chain.