Evolutionary dynamics of two-actor VMI-driven supply chains

Abstract

The strategy of integration known as vendor-managed inventory (VMI), which allows the coordination of inventory policies between producers and buyers in supply chains, has long been considered a strategy for inventory cost reduction. Although the literature acknowledges the importance of understanding the dynamics of VMI implementation through evolutionary games, research in this topic still remains scarce. This paper studies the dynamics of strategic interaction of a producer–buyer supply chain under a newly developed VMI scheme, which makes use of a synchronization mechanism between the buyer and the producer replenishment cycles. By using this alternative VMI representation, we obtain the mathematical conditions that determine the degree of stability of evolutionarily stable strategies. As other evolutionary game theoretical approaches, we also find a lower bound for penalty costs that ensures a VMI contract, but most importantly, we also find how a VMI implementation might depend on the difference between production and demand rates, regardless of any penalty costs.