Deterministic and stocastic formulations on inventory managemente whit returns

During the last decades, product retum flows in inventory management have received growing attention and several quantitative models have been developed in order to face such complex issue. However, no generai frameworks have been suggested yet. The time seems to be right for presenting a review paper 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 c1assifying them into deterministic and stochastic models. These latter are then organized into periodic and continuous models. Note that the research works description represents the core part of this literature review. Moreover, in the last part of the research work, a brief description of an advanced simulator for facing the inventory management issue in case of products returns is presented. Actually the research activities related to the simulator are stili ongoing.