Research On The Choice Of Supply Chain Partners In The Environment Of VMI

VMI is a collaborative strategy between downstream firms and vendors. It is an inevitable trend for the development of supply chain management.The practice of VMI needs the trustful supply chain partnership between downstream firms and vendors. As long as the good partnership is established, downstream firms and vendors can implement the integration and cooperation well. They can design and control the work of the whole supply chain together. The reasonable evaluation and rational choice of partner are the preconditions for the establishment of the good partnership. So the evaluation and choice of cooperative partners is the basis for the running of partnership. Enterprises which carry out VMI must evaluate and choose the supply chain partners rationally.To begin with, it introduces the researching background, significance and current researching status of this field. In the second chapter, it summarizes the theories about SCM and VMI. In the third chapter, it explains the characteristics of the management of supply chain partnership in the environment of VMI and the effects on the choice of supply chain partner which is made by the implementation of VMI. In the fourth chapter, it advances two sets of index systems for downstream firms and vendors to choose partners in the environment of VMI. In the fifth chapter, this article specifies how to choose partner by using Grey Relative Degree Analysis Method on the basis of the primary steps and methods. Finally, it makes an expectation for the further research in the future.