IntroductionA supply chain is defined as a network of facilities and distribution options that perform the functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers. Managing such functions along the whole chain; that is, from the supplier's supplier to the customer's customer; requires a great deal of coordination among the players in the chain. The effectiveness of coordination in supply chains could be measured in two ways: reduction in total supply chain costs and enhanced coordination services provided to the end customer ⎯ and to all players in the supply chain. Inventory is the highest cost in a supply chain accounting for almost 50% of the total logistics costs. Integrating order quantities models among players in a supply chain is a method of achieving coordination. For coordination to be successful, incentive schemes must be adopted. The literature on supply chain coordination have proposed several incentive schemes for coordination; such as quantity discounts, permissible delay in payments, price discounts, volume discount, common replenishment periods. The available quantitative models in supply chain coordination consider up to four levels (i.e., tier-1 supplier, tier-2 supplier, manufacturer, and buyer), with the majority of studies investigating a two-level supply chain with varying assumptions (e.g., multiple buyers, stochastic demand, imperfect quality, etc). Coordination decisions in supply chains are either centralized or decentralized decision-making processes. A centralized decision making process assumes a unique decision-maker (a team) managing the whole supply chain with an objective to minimize (maximize) the total supply chain cost (profit), whereas a decentralized decision-making process involves multiple decision-makers who have conflicting objectives. This chapter will review the literature for quantitative models for centralised supply chain coordination that emphasize inventory management for the period from 1990 to end of 2007. In this chapter, we will classify the models on the basis of incentive schemes, supply chain levels, and assumptions. This chapter will also provide a map indicative of the limitations of the available studies and steer readers to future directions along this line of research.
Centralised supply chain coordinationA typical supply chain consists of multistage business entities where raw materials and components are pushed forward from the supplier's supplier to the customer's customer. During this forward push, value is gradually added at each entity in the supply chain transforming raw materials and components to take their final form as finished products at the customer's end, the buyer. These business entities may be owned by the same organization or by several organizations. Goyal & Gupta (1989) suggested that coordination could be achieved by integrating lotsizing models. However, coordinating orders among players in a supply chain might...