A decision support system for vendor managed inventory

Recently, vendors and retailers have begun to forge cooperative agreements to manage inventory, which requires sharing demand information and setting mutually agreed upon performance targets for the supply chain. This paper describes the market forecasting and inventory management components of a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) decision support system and how this system was implemented by a major apparel manufacturer and over 30 of its retail partners. The DSS also helped the vendor and retailers arrive at jointly agreed upon customer service level and inventory turnover targets. As a result of implementing this VMI system, customer service levels improved dramatically, often coupled with a significant improvement in inventory turnover. The VMI performance results relative to the existing system and related insights for supply chain coordination are discussed.