Coordination of the supply chain of seasonal products

Because of the demand uncertainty of seasonal products, the retailer prefers to place an order as late as possible, so that he can have enough time to collect more information, which is helpful to reduce demand forecast error. On the other hand, the manufacturer has limited production capacity in general cases. The late ordering would result in insufficient production times, thus increasing the production cost. Such a conflict exists universally in a supply chain, especially in the seasonal products' supply chain. As a result, coordination between the retailer and the manufacturer becomes very important. In the paper, based on the traditional operating system, an improved operating system is introduced whose impact to both bodies of a supply chain is examined under the condition of information symmetry. The result shows that the manufacturer may not be better off or well off, although the retailer's performance is improved. Then, some profit compensation plans are designed so as to make the operating system Pareto improve     

Coordination and price competition in a duopoly common retailer supply chain

This paper analyzes the coordination and competition issues in a two-stage supply-chain distribution system where two vendors compete to sell differentiated products through a common retailer in the same market. The demand of a product not only depends on its own price, but also on the price of the other. Mathematical models have been developed to analyze the coordination issues under three different contexts: (i) price competition without channel coordination; (ii) price competition with channel coordination; and (iii) global coordination. It has been shown that under certain conditions, price competition through the dynamic process of price adjustment reaches the Nash–Bertrand equilibrium. Conditions have been derived for the Nash–Bertrand equilibrium to be dynamically stable. Further, it has been shown that duopoly competition can make consumers better-off or worse-off depending on the degree of product differentiation and the type of the product; while coordination enhances overall supply-chain profitability. The model is illustrated with suitable numerical examples.     

Coordination of cooperative advertising models in a one-manufacturer two-retailer supply chain system

This paper considers cooperative advertising issues of a monopolistic manufacturer with competing duopolistic retailers. Four possible game structures (or power configurations), i.e., Stackelberg–Cournot, Stackelberg–Collusion, Nash–Cournot and Nash–Collusion, are discussed. Under each of four game structures, we develop a decision model for the three partners to design the optimal cooperative advertising policies. Through a comparison among the four models, we reveal how cooperative advertising policies and profits of all participants are affected by various competitive behaviors, and then determine whether the partners have any incentives to transit to a different structure. Also presented in the paper are a centralized decision model and a proposed cost-sharing contract, which is able to achieve perfect coordination of the considered channel, where the utility of risk preference is used to determine the fraction of local advertising costs shared by the manufacturer.     

Coordination mechanism of IT service supply chain: an economic perspective

Currently, there are two models of service delivery in the information technology (IT) arena: implementation agent and software-as-a-service (SaaS), and each model results in a different IT service supply chain (SSC) structure. When IT service is delivered via implementation agents, independent software vendors (ISV) form the core of the supply chain, while in SaaS chains, platform operators act as the core. It is important to clarify how to coordinate supply chain participants in their respective supply chains, because there is sparse research about supply chain coordination contracts in the IT service industry. This paper draws upon the theory of revenue sharing contracts and investigates IT SSC coordination mechanisms under both SaaS and implementation agent models. The analytical results indicate that a SaaS supply chain has an optimal IT service price that is only related to the variable costs (C _os ) of the SaaS platform operator, and so if the variable cost (C _os ) can be reduced to zero, perfect coordination would exist. In contrast, the implementation agent supply chain achieves perfect coordination when the variable cost of the implementation agent is equal to the average unit implementation fee. By comparing the two supply chain models and interpreting their respective coordination mechanisms, this study can further advance supply chain contract theory research.     

Coordination policy for a two-stage supply chain considering quantity discounts and overlapped delivery with imperfect quality

Unlike the traditional integrated supplier–buyer coordination model, this research incorporates overlapped delivery and imperfect items into the production–distribution model. This model improves the observable fact that the system might experience shortage during the screening duration and also takes quantity discount into account. This approach has not been discussed in previous integrated supplier–buyer coordination models. The expected annual integrated total cost function is derived and properties and theorems are explored to help develop an algorithm. A solution procedure, free from the convexity associated with an algorithm is established to find the optimal solution. A numerical example is given to illustrate the proposed procedure and algorithm. A sensitivity analysis is made to investigate the effects of five important parameters (the inspect rate, the annual demand, the defective rate, the holding cost, and the receiving cost) on the optimal solution. Managerial insights are also discussed.     

Dynamic supply chain scheduling

Based on a combination of fundamental results of modern optimal program control theory and operations research, an original approach to supply chain scheduling is developed in order to answer the challenges of dynamics, uncertainty, and adaptivity. Both supply chain schedule generation and execution control are represented as an optimal program control problem in combination with mathematical programming and interpreted as a dynamic process of operations control within an adaptive framework. Hence, the problems and models of planning, scheduling, and adaptation can be consistently integrated on a unified mathematical axiomatic of modern control theory. In addition, operations control and flow control models are integrated and applicable for both discrete and continuous processes. The application of optimal control for supply chain scheduling becomes possible by formulating the scheduling model as a linear non-stationary finite-dimensional controlled differential system with the convex area of admissible control and a reconfigurable structure. For this model class, theorems of optimal control existence can be used regarding supply chain scheduling. The essential structural property of this model are the linear right parts of differential equations. This allows applying methods of discrete optimization for optimal control calculation. The calculation procedure is based on applying Pontryagin’s maximum principle and the resulting essential reduction of problem dimensionality that is under solution at each instant of time. The gained insights contribute to supply chain scheduling theory, providing advanced insights into dynamics of the whole supply chains (and not any dyadic relations in them) and transition from a partial “one-way” schedule optimization to the feedback loop-based dynamic and adaptive supply chain planning and scheduling.     

Poisoning the software supply chain

To the indiscriminate and opportunistic attacker, breaking into a software package's development and distribution site and waiting until unsuspecting users install it is more efficient than locating and hacking into users' systems individually. Starting in 2002 and continuing in to 2003, we've seen new emphasis on this type of attack. All the recent activity has showcased the trend that attacks against open-source software distribution sites are increasing. The author looks at how softwares distribution-both open source and proprietary-can invite attacks.     

Optimizing dynamic supply chain formation in supply mesh using CSET model

A new e-Service model called dynamic supply chain is characterized by their dynamic nature in easily being formed and disbanded with the seamless connectivity provided by e-Marketplace. The new term “supply mesh” was coined to represent this virtual community of companies in which dynamic supply chains, as per project (also known as make-to-order), are formed across different tiers of suppliers. In a supply mesh, a dynamic supply chain can be formed vertically, from the top to the bottom layers, mediating different companies for a project. Companies that are on the same level laterally are usually competitors, and the companies that are linked vertically as supply chains are trading partners. From a global view, the companies that are connected in the supply mesh can be viewed as individual entities that have self-interest. They may compete for survival as well as collaborate with each other for jobs. Given such complex relations the challenge is to find an optimal group of members for a dynamic supply chain in the supply mesh. A multi-agent model called the collaborative single machine earliness/tardiness (CSET) model was recently proposed for the optimal formation of make-to-order supply chains. This paper investigates the possibilities of applying CSET in a supply mesh, and the corresponding allocation schemes are experimentally studied in simulations. One scheme called Cost-driven principle leads to destructive competition while the other one namely Pareto-optimal evolves into a cooperative competition that tries to mutually benefit every participant. The results, based on samples from the U.S. textile industry, show that a cooperative competition scheme is superior in terms of optimal allocation, which obtains maximum satisfaction for all participants.     

Electronic commerce front-end in apparel supply chain

Information technology has been used increasingly to enhance the global competitiveness in various industries through the widespread application of cost effective electronic commerce. Many Internet-based systems have been designed and developed for supply chain management in many areas, such as publishing, computer, and garment industries. Most of them mainly center on information communication infrastructure, coordination between production and distribution, and purchasing functions with security mechanism. In this paper, we focus on the most common modules in electronic commerce front-end to conjoin various business organizations and to strengthen business competence, namely (1) an efficient web page and catalogue generator; (2) a hybrid search engine specifically for product, merchandise, equipment, and other enabling technologies; and (3) a set of tools to monitor usage patterns to further improve the web page organization. We also address the issues on implementation, examples and future directions.     

供应链渠道协调中的Stackelberg主从对策

针对供应链的渠道协调问题,给出一类供应链Stackelberg主从对策协调机制,其中分销商作为主方给出最小补充期和数量折扣策略,顾客是从方以最优库存策略响应。建立了顾客需求确定下的分销商成本优化模型,同时对比了两种不同数量折扣的协调作用。应用遗传算法对辽化石油分销系统Stackelberg主从对策问题进行离线仿真计算,得出了Stackelberg主从对策均衡解。     

The impact of supply contracts on supply chain product-flow management

One of the performance issues faced by the supply chain (SC) is the competitive production and delivery of products to all partners of the SC. The supply contract linking the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) with its suppliers currently represents an important decision tool influencing the production and delivery of final products.     

Coordination of production planning and distribution in closed-loop supply chains

Neural Computing and Applications - A closed-loop supply chain structure organises material and information flows from origin points to consumption points, including production, recycling,...     

Operational causes of bankruptcy propagation in supply chain

With the increasing interdependence among supply chain members, bankruptcy of a supply chain member may be caused by operational decisions of other members. To investigate how bankruptcy occurs and propagates in supply chain networks, we build a multi-agent simulation model for a two-stage supply chain that consists of multiple upstream manufacturers and multiple downstream retailers. Based on the developed simulation model, we study impacts of various operational parameters and decisions, such as horizontal competition among retailers, order allocation strategies of retailers, wholesale price of manufacturers, characteristics of market demand and number of retailers, on bankruptcy propagation. Since many operational decisions of a firm are made under financial constraints, we also investigate the linkage between firm's operational risks and financial decisions (e.g., the maximal risk of cash flow that a member is willing to take, and the up-front payment proportion of retailers in a two-period payment policy). Experimental results reveal that operational interactions between supply chain members and operational decisions made by supply chain members are important causes of bankruptcy propagation, but impacts of these operational parameters and decisions depend on financial decisions. These observations indicate that supply chain members can moderately hedge their operational risk through financial decisions.     

网格供应链中工作流系统的设计

当前,对于供应链中的成员企业而言,如何更好地处理数据信息,并将其处理结果及时准确地提供给供应链中的各个相关企业已成为关键.企业可以利用供应链网格对在供应链中出现的大量数据进行处理,及对跨组织的业务流程进行协同管理.对供应链网格中的工作流进行了描述,分析了供应链网格中工作流系统的特性,最后提出了一种基于Agent的供应链网格工作流系统模型.     

A study of emergency management of supply chain under supply disruption

Emergency is an important factor resulting in supply disruption risk. How to deal with emergency in supply chain arouses managers’ and researchers’ attention in recent years. In order to improve the effect of supply disruption risk management under this situation, this paper builds the supply disruption Emergency Management Model of supply chain from the angle of risk management and discusses whether the decision-making mechanism of the case-based reasoning can bring the better effect for supply disruption by using computational experiment. The results mainly show that the mechanism of risk assessment, risk identification, risk control and risk evaluation based on the case-based reasoning can effectively deal with supply disruption risk, and bring more profit and better service level for the members of supply chain.     

Semi-online two-level supply chain scheduling problems

We consider two-level supply chain scheduling problems where customers release jobs to a manufacturer that has to process the jobs and deliver them to the customers. Processed jobs are grouped into batches, which are delivered to the customers as single shipments. The objective is to minimize the total cost which is the sum of the total flow time and the total delivery cost. Such problems have been considered in the off-line environment where future jobs are known, and in the online environment where at any time there is no information about future jobs. It is known that the best possible competitive ratio for an online algorithm is 2. We consider the problem in the semi-online environment, assuming that a lower bound P for all processing times is available a priori, and present a semi-online algorithm with competitive ratio \(\frac{2D}{D+P}\) where D is the cost of a delivery. Also, for the special case where all processing times are equal, we prove that the algorithm is \(1.045\sqrt{\frac{2-u}{u}}\)-competitive, where u is the density of the instance.     

基于Multi-Agent的供应链系统模型及其仿真

针对具有复杂自适应特征的供应链系统,设计了一个基于multi-agent的制造业供应链系统仿真模型.该模型分别从企业主体层和业务流程层构建供应链系统的agent模型,通过各独立ageIlt之间的来实现系统从接到客户订单到交付产品的整个过程.通过将任务分解并引入合同网模型来建立制造商与供应商之间的高效协商机制.通过在swarm平台上的系统仿真实验表明,该模型可较好的反映供应链内部的运行状况,并有良好的测试效果和稳定性.     

On supply chain cash flow risks

This study models the supply chain related cash flow risks for a business entity measured by the standard deviations of cash inflows, outflows, and netflows of each period in a planning horizon. The goal is to provide an insightful look on how common practices that intend to improve the Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC), e.g., offering early payment discounts, may contribute to cash flow risks. We show the benefits and recommend the best policy of using Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) to finance accounts receivable as a means to shorten the CCC and lower the cash inflow risk. It is particularly helpful to small vendors having tight cash reserves and high financing costs.     

Dynamic supply chain design with inventory

In this paper, we deal with a facility location problem where we build new facilities or close down already existing facilities at two different distribution levels over a given time horizon. In addition, we allow to carry over stock in warehouses between consecutive periods. Our model intends to minimize the total costs, including transportation and inventory holding costs for products as well as fixed and operating costs for facilities.