Research On Inventory Optimization Strategy For Chilled Meat Of The Retail Terminals

With the rapid development of China’s economy and the improvement of people’s life, the demand for meat has remained growing these years. Especially, the technology for keeping meat fresh and the cold-chain logistics for transportation and storage have promoted the chilled meat welcomed in people’s daily life. At the same time, the food quality and safety are more focused by today’s residents in the circumstance of good quality life. They turned to be very picky on the freshness and nutritional values of the fresh food, which makes it harder for the administrator to operate the retail terminals’chilled meat with high value, perishability and short shelf life. In this case, how to largely satisfy the consumers’demands, to avoid damage and dead stock and to improve the benefits have become the most serious problems to be solved.As the last link of the supply chain, the retail terminals’profits largely depend on the level of inventory management. And a scientific and rational inventory optimization strategy plays a positive role in promoting its inventory management. As we all know, chilled meat is one kind of cold fresh food, which is a perishable product. There are many researches on the perishable products’inventory optimization management, however, few studies on the cold fresh food with freshness lifetime and the sale characteristics of the retail terminals taken into consideration.Based on the backgrounds mentioned above, the EOQ model is established from the perspectives of ordering and pricing for the inventory optimization of chilled meat in retail terminals. Firstly, review the chilled meat’s current situation, trends, relative researches as well as the inventory optimization research status of perishable products both at home and abroad. Secondly, analyze the inventory level changes of chilled meat in the retail terminals from the aspects of the perishability and demand, on the basis of the Ghare and Schrsder’s perishable product inventory control theory, food science theory and supply chain management theory. Thirdly, establish a more reasonable inventory optimization model for chilled meat of the retail terminals with its characteristics like limited freshness lifetime, short shelf-time, perishability, discontinuous demand and daily pricing taken into consideration and analyze its relevant property to prove the existence of optimal solution. Finally, take the A retail terminal as an example and apply the parameter values to the model, which maximize the total profits of inventory and the service level in a period to verify the validity of the control model. The inventory optimization model not only can provide scientific theoretical basis and decision support for the chilled meat’s operation, but also offer the reference for the refrigerated fresh food which has the same features with chilled meat.