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Generally, the transportation of cargo plays a vital role in effective supply chain management. For the safe transportation of the goods, the Returnable Containers (RCs) are provided by the container management organization to the consignee as rental basis. Unfortunately, some of the RCs are returned as delay in time for some situations. This study explores a situation of container management organization that unexpected delay of empty containers and then suggests a restoring strategy for shortfall units. As a strategy of restoring the shortfall units, this research considers the leasing option instead of buying the new RCs. This paper examines the container inventory model with the consideration of the delayed return of containers under the fuzzy arena. Because the container's return rate is unpredictable and uncertain, the container inventory model is formulating under fuzzy environment. This research describes a container inventory model with price-sensitive demand. In this model, the container return rate as well as the proportion of repairable from received RCs as Triangular Fuzzy Numbers (TFNs). The optimal duration of inspection of the container and the optimal duration of the lease of an RC are obtained. The expected total cost using the fuzzy return rate and the fuzzy proportion of repairable RCs is computed. The container inventory model under fuzzy arena is proposed to attain the approximate outcome for the unpredictable and uncertain parameters. The impact of the fuzzy proportion of retuned RCs, fuzzy reparable from received RCs, and the changes in some parameters on optimal solutions are performed in the sensitivity analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study a two-echelon supply chain inventory system with a single manufacturer and a single buyer, considering price-dependent demand and variable lead time. Lead time can be reduced by added crashing cost. We first assume that the lead time demand follows a normal probability distribution and then consider the case where it is distribution free. We develop both the centralized and decentralized models and derive the optimal solutions by using profit maximization criterion. Feasibility and efficiency of the proposed models are justified through two numerical examples. We numerically investigate how the optimal decisions are affected by changes in various model-parameters. From numerical study, we observe that even though the lead time reduction diminishes the retailer's selling price, it enhances the system profit significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the simultaneous coordination of price and capacity building decisions in a dyadic supply chain. This problem is a combination of capacity reservation problem and pricing problem. While the coordination of supply chain with stochastic demand and fixed prices has received much attention in the literature, price-dependent and stochastic demand has been less considered. We study the latter case where a price-setting retailer faces a linear decreasing demand with respect to price. To capture the uncertainty of the demand, we add a stochastic variable to the demand function. In addition, we incorporate production rate and inventory cost on the supplier side. We propose Revenue Sharing Reservation Contract with Penalty (RSRP) as a coordination mechanism to align the price and capacity decisions. We then extend the model to include multiple retailers which are geographically dispersed. We next conduct a comprehensive numerical example with an extensive sensitivity analysis to understand the behavior and robustness of the supply chain under a RSRP, and finally, we draw some managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The saliency of returns in today's business world is unquestionable, in such items as toys, Christmas decorations, books, seasonal/fashion items and the like. This is largely due to the high economic benefits prevalent in some industries today and to the increasing opportunities for resale in secondary and global markets. This paper attempts to model the profitability of returns policy in presence of a secondary market, to a profit-maximizing manufacturer in a newsvendor framework. The returns policy applies both for the unsold merchandise left at the end of the selling season and the items returned by the unsatisfied customers within the specified time period. With a returns policy, the manufacturer shares the risks of demand uncertainty, in turn assuaged by the availability of secondary market. The manufacturer's decision is to arrive at an optimal wholesale price and the returns policy, based on the retailer's reaction on that offer. The retailer in turn optimizes the retail price and the order quantity to meet a price-dependent uncertain demand. This set of optimal policies has then been contrasted to that obtained from maximizing the combined profit of the manufacturer and of the retailer. The key question in the comparison has been clearly answered. The total combined profit that coordinates the policies of both channels exceeds that of the sum of the profits obtained independently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]