Co-ordination in a single-vendor multi-buyer supply chain by synchronizing delivery and production cycles with trade credit policy

In this paper, we propose a coordinated single-vendor multi-buyer supply chain model by synchronizing delivery and production cycles with trade credit option. The synchronization is achieved by scheduling the actual delivery days of the buyers and coordinating it with the vendor´s production cycle. It can be shown that the synchronized cycles policy works better, in terms of total system costs, than independent optimization. While the vendor is benefited from the co-ordination by synchronized cycles, a credit option scheme is proposed which can guarantee that a buyer´s total relevant cost, as a result of coordination, will not increase when compared with independent optimization. An equitable profit-sharing scheme is also developed and a numerical example is provided.