Two echelon partial trade credit financing in a supply chain derived algebraically

Abstract

Trade credit financing has become a powerful tool to improve sales & profit in an industry. In general, a supplier/retailer frequently offers trade credit to its credit risk downstream member in order to stimulate their respective sales. This trade credit may either be full or partial depending upon the past profile of the downstream member. Partial trade credit may be offered by the supplier/retailer to their credit risk downstream member who must pay a portion of the purchase amount at the time of placing an order and then receives a permissible delay on the rest of the outstanding amount to avoid nonpayment risks. The present study investigates the retailer's inventory problem under partial trade credit financing for two echelon supply chain where the supplier, as well as the retailer, offers partial trade credit to the subsequent downstream member. An algebraic approach has been applied for finding the retailer's optimal ordering policy under minimizing the annual total relevant cost. Results have been validated with the help of examples followed by comprehensive sensitivity analysis.