The value of information sharing in a supply chain with a seasonal demand process

This paper considers a two echelon seasonal supply chain model that consists of one supplier and one retailer, with the assumption that external demand from the customer follows a seasonal autoregressive moving average (SARMA) process, including marketing actions that cannot be deduced from the other parameters of the demand process. In our model, the supplier and the retailer employ order-up-to policy to replenish their inventory. In order to evaluate the value of information sharing in a two echelon seasonal supply chain, three levels of information sharing proposed by Yu, Yan, and Cheng (2002) are used. The results for optimal inventory policies under these three levels of information sharing are derived. We show that the seasonal effect has an important impact on optimal inventory policies of the supplier under the three levels of information sharing. Our findings also demonstrate that the replenishment of lead time must be less than the seasonal period in order to benefit from information sharing. Thus, this result provides managers with managerial insights to improve supply chain performance through information sharing integration partnerships.     

Effects of information technology alignment and information sharing on supply chain operational performance

The paper aims to investigate the effects of information technology (IT) alignment and information sharing on operational performance in the context of supply chain. Based on the resource-based view, this study identifies IT alignment and information sharing as specific resources/capabilities for supply chain partnership. Data from 141 Chinese manufacturers are collected to test the relationships among IT alignment, information sharing, and operational performance. The results show that (1) both IT alignment and information sharing have direct and positive effects on operational performance, (2) IT alignment has an indirect effect on operational performance through information sharing, and (3) IT alignment and information sharing have different emphases in operational performance improvement. The resource-capability-performance paradigm is extended to supply chain context in the emerging economy. Chinese managers may have different emphases on IT resource/information sharing capability deployment for operational efficiency and effectiveness.     

Analysis on the effects of stock sharing on supply chain

Considering a two-period, two-part supply chain consisting of one supplier and multi-retailers, this paper studies the effects of stock sharing among retailers on the supply chain. By establishing analysis model and using simulation method, the effects of stock sharing mode and also the traditional mode without stock sharing on retailer, supplier and the whole supply chain’s performance are analyzed. The research results show that when supplier is in a dominant position, although only under certain conditions the stock sharing can stimulate retailer to increase order volume and make supplier to gain a better profit, it always make the profitability of retailer and supplier better than in the traditional mode. When supplier is in a dominant position, stock sharing can always stimulate retailer to increase their order volume, and the profitability of the retailer, supplier and the whole supply chain is always better than the traditional mode situation without stock sharing.     

Information sharing and the impact of shutdown policy in a supply chain with market disruption risk in the social media era

This paper investigates the information sharing issue in a simple supply chain with one manufacturer and one retailer. The market demand might be subject to disruption, but the retailer can get access to some signals from social media platforms to better forecast the market state (regular or disrupted) even though the signals might be not fully reliable. Different from the traditional information sharing literature, we incorporate the shutdown policy into our model. We first characterize the equilibrium outcomes under both with- and without-information sharing cases and then examine the players’ preferences over information sharing or not. It is shown that when the level of information reliability is relatively low, the manufacturer prefers the information sharing cases, whereas the retailer prefers the no-sharing case, and information sharing does harm to the whole channel. In addition, our results show that as the level of information reliability increases, the manufacturer benefits more but the retailer and the whole channel lose more from information sharing. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, when the level of information reliability falls into an intermediary interval, the retailer will have an incentive to share information, and information sharing will benefit the manufacturer and the whole supply chain. However, the benefits from information sharing decrease as the level of information reliability increases. When the level of information reliability is sufficiently high, both firms are indifferent between the information sharing and no-sharing cases. Additionally, the incorporation of the shutdown policy has important implications for the information sharing issue, and thus, the policy should not be overlooked.