Literature Review: Inventory Management in The Supply Chain

This literature review paper focuses on inventory management in the supply chain and the issues involved in performance, costs, responding to demands, logistics, and sustainable pressures. There are multiple angles to view these challenges in the supply chain, subscription/auto-delivery procurement, handling and reuse of defective items under global sourcing, joint pricing–inventory control in multi-channel systems, integrated inventory–transportation planning with collaborative consolidation, and retail strategies for liquidity and space constraints. Below I synthesize key contributions, highlight methodological approaches, and identify recurring gaps that motivate further doctoral research.

Scholars continue to study how inventory management systems can be better used in order to achieve a balance between cost and risk. This literature review synthesizes scholarly peer reviewed contributions from 2021 to 2025 to highlight the evolving role of inventory management in modern supply chains. Ahmed et al. (2022) examines the global supply chain environments in which defective products can be reworked and inventory levels interact with multi-trade-credit arrangements, demonstrating the complexity of managing stock when financial and quality considerations intersect. Furthermore, Bekci et al. (2023) mention inventory management decisions to be in multiple systems with various demands, emphasizing the importance of having flexible control mechanisms in supply chains with incomplete information.