Inventory Control With Products Returns: A State Of The Art Overview

One of the most important problem in inventory control regards the stocks management in case of products returns. During the last decades, products returns flows in inventory management have received growing attention and several quantitative models have been developed in order to face such complex issue. However, no general frameworks have been suggested yet. In this context, the research work presents a literature review on the main inventory control models proposed by researchers and scientists working in this specific area. The authors review the models by considering the different modeling approaches for demand and returns processes and by classifying them into deterministic and stochastic models. These latter are then organized into periodic and continuous review models. Note that the description of each research work represents the core part of this literature review