An Inventory Model For Convenience Store In Two-stage Supply Chain With One-DC And N-Stores

Following the developed economy, the pace of daily living turn faster, and the level of living turn higher. Now, people pay more attentions to the convenience and speed when they go shopping. Convenience store developed in a surprised speed, which met the customer's preference. It has a bright future in the retail industry. Some scholars predict that there will be two dominators in the retail industry. One is super-market, another is convenience store.In current, many scholars did researches on the convenience store, for example, current development status and countermeasure, distribution system, store-located, inventory management etc. And the inventory problem is the most important, also urgent. Although, there are a lot of articles giving methods to manage inventory for the enterprises, the methods are limited by the given suppositions. In fact, they don't often work well in the actually inventory jobs, because new problems always happen.This article, according to the actually status of Kede Convenience Store on inventory management, designed a model to control inventory for convenience store, which was based by the theories on inventory control, supply chain management and optimization methods etc. This article has two main parts. The first part is that it designed an upper-lower limit model to control stock for store by using the methods on data analyzing, forecasting and stock-managing. In the second part, firstly, it discussed the different inventory strategies both DC and store took in different games, for example, location inventory game, echelon inventory game, cooperative echelon inventory game and equilibria inventory game etc., when it was supposed in the two-stage supply chain with one DC and one store. Finally, it built an inventory model for convenience store in the two-stage supply chain with one DC and N store. That inventory model will help increase the service level without increasing the inventory cost, or simultaneously decrease the inventory cost.