Inventory Routing Problem Under Dynamic Regional Pricing With Horizontal Collaboration

In order to fully dig the consumption potential of the rural market,many suppliers have begun to implement "Channel Sinking" strategy.During the implementation of "Channel Sinking" strategy,in order to better cope with the uncertainty of demand,the implementation of vendor management inventory(VMI)is very essential.Inventory routing and pricing are the three issues of mutual influence and restriction in VMI,and the key to eliminate the Bullwhip effect in supply chain operation and improve the profit of suppliers.Therefore,Based on managing retail shop inventory,it is so important to rationally plan the distribution route to retail shop,optimize inventory quantity of each product at each retail shop,and determine the selling price of each product.Based on the research of Inventory Routing Problem(IRP)and Inventory Routing Pricing Problem(IRPP),this paper constructed Inventory Routing under Dynamic Regional Pricing problem(IRDRP)with horizontal collaboration strategy,realizing the overall optimization of inventory management,distribution management and dynamic regional pricing management.The suppliers whose revenue is improved achieve win-win cooperation.The main research fruits of this paper are as follows:(1)Aiming at multi-supplier multi-product inventory routing problem under dynamic regional pricing in the VMI pull supply chain,a differential pricing strategy for customer's product in different time periods and different regions was proposed.The reasonable allocation plan of vehicle rental cost and fuel cost for the common distribution vehicle is designed,and the inventory routing model under dynamic regional pricing with horizontal collaboration is constructed.(2)The model is analyzed by using convex function theory,and it is proved that the model is a convex function about decision variables on the set,so that the model has a unique optimal solution.Therefore,it can be solved by using solving software.(3)In order to verify the impact of the implementation of horizontal collaboration strategy on inventory routing problem under dynamic regional pricing,this paper refers to real cases in existing literature.Comparing with inventory routing problem under dynamic regional pricing without horizontal collaboration on pricing,delivery quantity,distribution distance and profit,advantages are intuitively showed by considering horizontal collaboration strategy.(4)The results of case analysis show that considering horizontal collaboration strategy,the vendor's product pricing will be decreased,the distance of distribution vehicle will be significantly shortened,the delivery amount will be more balanced in each period and the inventory level at the end of period will be significantly reduced.What is the difference in the proportion of supplying between suppliers,the suppliers'profits can be significantly improved.The research shows that the model of this paper can increase the revenue of vendors,effectively reduce vendors' distribution costs and inventory costs,and achieve the goal of win-win cooperation among supplier alliance.So as to better achieve horizontal collaboration of suppliers,and better the implementation of inventory routing problem under regional dynamic pricing,this paper can provide theoretical and practical references.