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.

中文翻译：

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两要素VMI驱动的供应链的演化动力学

长期以来，被称为供应商管理库存（VMI）的集成策略允许在供应链中的生产者和购买者之间协调库存策略，长期以来一直被认为是降低库存成本的策略。尽管文献承认通过进化游戏了解VMI实施动态的重要性，但有关该主题的研究仍然很少。本文研究了在新开发的VMI方案下生产者与买方供应链战略互动的动力学，该方案利用了买方和生产者补货周期之间的同步机制。通过使用这种替代的VMI表示，我们获得了确定进化稳定策略稳定程度的数学条件。与其他进化博弈理论方法一样，