On contracts for VMI program with continuous review (r, Q) policy

Based on continuous review (r, Q) policy, this paper deals with contracts for vendor managed inventory (VMI) program in a system comprising a single vendor and a single retailer. Two business scenarios that are popular in VMI program are “vendor with ownership” and “retailer with ownership”. Taking the system performance in centralized control as benchmark, we define a contract “perfect” if the contract can enable the system to be coordinated and can guarantee the program to be trusted. A revenue sharing contract is designed for vendor with ownership, and a franchising contract is designed for retailer with ownership. Without consideration of order policy and related costs at the vendor site, it is shown that one contract can perform satisfactorily and the other one is a perfect contract. With consideration of order policy and related costs at the vendor site, it is shown that one contract can perform satisfactorily and the performance of the other one depends on system parameters.