The choice of the government green subsidy scheme: innovation subsidy vs. product subsidy

A critical problem that beleaguers governments in the promotion of green development is determining which approach to employ in establishing an efficient green subsidy scheme. In this study, we scrutinise the effects of three government subsidy schemes: a green non-subsidy (GNS), a green product subsidy (GPS), and a green innovation subsidy (GIS). Taking social welfare into consideration, the optimal green subsidy scheme of governments in different settings is investigated. Interestingly, we find that a green subsidy is not always a good choice for the government. When the cost of green innovation is particularly low, or when both the cost of green innovation and the variable production cost of green product are high, if the environmental improvement effectiveness yielded by green innovation is insignificant, the GNS is the best. Otherwise, both the GPS and the GIS achieve greater levels of social welfare. In addition, counter to intuition, the GPS outperforms the GIS when the cost of green innovation is sufficiently high and green innovation reduces the variable production cost of green product significantly, even if the GIS can directly help to lighten the green innovation cost load. However, from the perspective of maximising subsidy efficiency, the GIS is always better than the GPS.     

The impact of strategic inventory and procurement strategies on green product design in a two-period supply chain

This study analyses the impact of power structures and strategic inventory on the development-intensive and marginal-cost-intensive green product types under three procurement strategies. The results suggest that (i) in the manufacturer-Stackelberg game, the retailer retains strategic inventory to earn higher profits. The retailer's decision improves profit for the manufacturer and greening level of the product; (ii) for the marginal-cost-intensive green product, the power structures and procurement strategies cannot make any impact on the greening level and the retailer cannot build up strategic inventory under retailer-Stackelberg game; (iii) under the Nash game, the procurement decision creates conflict between the supply chain members for marginal-cost-intensive green products; (iv) if the retailer does not maintain strategic inventory or procures product in a single lot, then the manufacturer prefers to produce marginal-cost-intensive products and retailer prefers to sale development-intensive products to receive maximum profits under manufacturer-Stackelberg game. The optimal preferences are concurrent under retailer-Stackelberg game, but not under the Nash game; (v) single-period equilibrium solutions may exhibit sub-optimal characteristics, but two-period planning can lead to exemplary outcomes in the perspective of the greening level and profits of the supply chain members.     

非对称信息下考虑政府补贴的绿色供应链博弈模型

考查由1个生产商和1个零售商构成的两级绿色供应链系统,绿色产品的市场需求由产品价格和产品绿色度共同决定。假设消费者对绿色产品的偏好程度是非对称信息,生产商无法准确预测消费者的绿色偏好。构建3种不同情形下的博弈模型,得到3种情形下的批发价、产品绿色度、零售价、生产商利润和零售商利润的最优解。比较分析3种情形下最优解的不同变化,并分析消费者的绿色偏好程度对最优决策和利润产生的不同影响。     

Optimal strategies of improving energy efficiency for an energy-intensive manufacturer considering consumer environmental awareness

Motivated by the observation that many energy-intensive manufacturers are adopting energy efficiency to deal with rapidly increasing consumer environmental awareness (CEA), this paper is the first attempt that extends CEA into the energy-saving area using several mathematical models and investigates how an energy-intensive manufacturer, facing choices of self-saving, shared savings and guaranteed savings, determines the optimal strategies of improving energy efficiency when CEA is considered. When the actual savings per unit is deterministic (DU scenario), we derive the optimal strategies of improving energy efficiency for both the manufacturer and the energy service company (ESCO) under the two energy-saving modes: self-saving and shared savings. Our results show the following: (1) CEA always has positive impacts on the optimal predicted savings per unit and the optimal profits of both the manufacturer and the ESCO; (2) interestingly, the impact of CEA on the optimal choice between energy saving modes may not exist. Furthermore, when the actual savings per unit is stochastic (UU scenario), and if the energy-intensive manufacturer introduces guaranteed savings, we find that most of the optimal strategies under the UU scenario are similar to those under the DU scenario. Finally, through numerical studies, we demonstrate the important results.     

Optimal advertising outsourcing strategy with different effort levels and uncertain demand

This paper studies the issue of advertising outsourcing and production planning for a manufacturer facing asymmetric advertising cost and uncertain market demand. To improve product sales, a manufacturer would hire an advertising agency to provide professional service on product advertising before the production takes place. A contract taking into account both advertising effort level and payment is introduced to incentivize the advertising agency to report the exact cost to the manufacturer. Furthermore, a model with the goal of maximising the manufacturer's net profit is proposed, in which both product demand and payment to the advertising agency are affected by the advertising effort level. Analytical solutions of the optimal strategies including the optimal advertising effort level and the optimal payment to the advertising agency are derived. Optimal retail price and the optimal production quantity are also obtained for the manufacturer in making managerial decisions.     

Joint product variety,pricing and scheduling decisions in a flexible facility

This paper studies a manufacturer’s optimal product variety, pricing and scheduling decisions in a single flexible production facility when customers have private information in their marginal valuations for product qualities. In addition to determining the product variety and price of each product, the manufacturer needs to optimise a detailed schedule of production (batch sizes and production sequences) to fully utilise the flexibility of this facility. To achieve the second-degree discrimination, the manufacturer provides multiple products and follows a priority rule in the production schedule. To obtain economies of scale, the manufacturer may offer a composite product targeting the whole population, or choose a dedicated product to serve a proportion of customers. Comparing these three production choices, we observe that the optimal product variety strategy is threshold controlled by the relative ratio of customer arrival rates, the relative difference between customers’ marginal valuations and the production technology.     

Implications of product upgrading confronting supplier remanufacturing

It is generally believed that new products upgrading is an effective strategy to deal with the cannibalisation problem from remanufacturing, however, it is not clear how the new product upgrading strategy affect the decision-making of the downstream manufacturer and the upstream supplier. By examining the relationship between supplier remanufacturing profits and product cannibalisation, we develop two models to investigate the implications of the manufacturer's product upgrading confronting supplier remanufacturing. The results show that an product upgrading strategy can effectively enhance the manufacturer's profits if the investment cost is relatively low. Although the product upgrading strategy may hinder the remanufacturing operations, it will always be beneficial for the wholesaling of the supplier's new products. Therefore, the upgrading strategy can mitigate cannibalisation problems and create an optimal pareto improvement for both parties. Finally, we conduct a data analysis to provide additional managerial insights regarding the supply chain.     

基于讨价还价博弈的ATO供应链零部件生产及补货策略

通过建立ATO供应链中最终产品制造商与其两个供应商间的讨价还价合作模型,研究了ATO供应链的零部件生产补货策略和相应的利润分配策略,并探讨了供应链中各合作主体议价能力对最优解的影响。研究发现,ATO供应链应随着最终产品销售价格的提高而增加零部件产量,随最终产品组装成本或零部件生产成本的提高而减少零部件产量;随着最终产品制造商对其中一个供应商议价能力的增强,该供应商零部件的转移价格及其利润会降低,而另外一个供应商的零部件转移价格和利润会提高;若最终产品制造商比另外一个供应商的议价能力强,其期望利润会得到提高,反之,则会降低。     

基于风险规避的绿色供应链定价研究

为了解决风险规避型厂商在不同市场结构下的绿色供应链定价问题,首先以由一个风险规避的制造商和一个风险规避的零售商组成的二级绿色供应链为背景,考虑了消费者偏好、产品绿色度、厂商风险规避度等因素,构建厂商的期望效用函数,然后运用博弈论的方法建立了集中决策模型和三种分散决策模型。比较分析了这四种模型下的批发价格、产品绿色度和零售价格,并进一步分析了四种模型在制造商与零售商风险态度不同时的情况。最后通过MATLAB软件数值仿真研究了集中决策模型下的风险规避度对批发价格、产品绿色度、零售价格和供应链效用的影响以及产品绿色度对供应链效用的影响。仿真结果表明：在一定市场条件下,制造商风险规避对批发价格的影响程度要大于零售商,而对于产品绿色度、零售价格和供应链效用的影响程度是相同的且负向相关;同时,在固定制造商和零售商的风险规避度为0.5时,最优产品绿色度在3.3~3.4之间,最大产品绿色度为7.8。     

Strategically decentralise when encroaching on a dominant supplier

A manufacturer may encroach on his suppliers by developing substitutable components. In the presence of encroachment, the manufacturer could assemble products using (high-end) components purchased from the supplier, and assemble products using (low-end) components produced in-house. Thus, the manufacturer must deliberate on how to manage the expanded organisation consisting of competing product divisions. In this paper, we examine the quintessential organisational structure decision – the centralisation versus decentralisation choice – from the perspective of the manufacturer. Our model assumes that the supplier is a dominant player, moving first by pricing the high-end component, and consumers have a higher willingness-to-pay of the product containing the high-end component. In such a context, we find that the manufacturer may encroach on the supplier even if producing the low-end component costs more than producing the high-end one. The supplier should strategically price to deter or accommodate downstream encroachment contingent on the manufacturer’s organisational structure decision. If the unit cost of low-end components is high enough, product-based decentralisation is preferred to centralisation due to the supplier’s lower wholesale price. Furthermore, the manufacturer’s strategic decentralisation always hurts the supplier, always benefits the customers and could benefit or hurt the entire supply chain under certain conditions.     

A framework for designing robust supply chains considering product development issues

The primary objective of the design for supply chain (DFSC) is the selection of an appropriate product family. Moreover, it deals with the selection of the optimal combination among the different conflicting criteria while making a trade-off between the supply chain cost, sales profit and the product design complexities. In this research, to address the DFSC issues a product platform approach has been proposed which amalgamates the component modularity as well as the function modularity in the product design. The optimisation model proposed in this paper for the product development and the supply chain design is based on a generic bill of materials (GBOM) representation. The complete framework includes vital decision-making needed for designing a robust supply chain such as locating plants to alleviate the likely dominance of production cost and market mediation cost on product variety and imparting process flexibility of the located plants. The optimisation model proposed in this paper, models the supply chain cost, sales profit and product design complexity as three criteria that altogether determine the robustness of the supply chain and the underlying product development approach. Certain parameters like process flexibility, flow types and drivers of the product variety dominance have been controlled in the design framework. To resolve the complexity of the proposed model a genetic algorithm (GA) technique has been proposed. The proposed GA adopts an arithmetic crossover, a dynamic mutation and a variable penalty strategy to produce optimal results in a very short computational time. To validate the proposed model, a simulated case study of the wiring harness supplier of an AGV manufacturer has been studied.     

Game-theoretical analysis for supply chain with consumer preference to low carbon

This paper focuses on the impact of consumers’ preference to low carbon in the emission-concerned supply chain. In an emission-concerned supply chain, the consumers are assumed to prefer to low-carbon products. In an emission sensitive market, emission reduction not only brings the higher production costs but also stimulates the inverse demand function. Therefore, this may be an opportunity for players of the supply chain to coordinate their two objectives: environmental pressure (to reduce carbon emissions for environment protection) and profit-seeking, which intuitively seem to be contradictory. In order to address this research focus, a novel emission-sensitive demand function is adopted, and an emission -sensitive cost function is introduced explicitly to capture the deviation production cost caused by emission reduction. Then the decision-making of each member in the emission-concerned supply chain is investigated. We find that the decision-maker of the supply chain will choose different emission reduction strategies for different cases. An inspiring result shows that the channel profit as well as the emission reduction increase in the consumers’ preference to low-carbon consumption simultaneously in particular cases. Moreover, several emission-concerned contracts are designed to coordinate the channel. Another finding is that the manufacturer’s optimal carbon emissions per unit product keeps the same as the centralised channel, no matter whether the supply chain is coordinated or not. Furthermore, the further discussion reveals that less eco-friendly production than the traditional, if lack of external regulation as well as internal moral self-discipline, might be chosen under some specific conditions.     

The product cycling problem under increasing yield rates

We investigate the product cycling problem (also known as the common cycle scheduling problem) when there are economies of scale due to increasing yield rates. Increasing yield rates are characteristic of production processes in which the percentage of acceptable parts increases with the duration of the production run, usually owing to adjustments made during the initial portion of the production run. We develop a solution procedure that is optimal for a wide range of production cost functions under very mild conditions. We then compare optimal solutions with those obtained from the commonly used 'fixed-plus-linear' approximation of costs. Computational results suggest that the 'fixed-plus-linear' approximation generally performs well, but may result in substantial errors under certain extreme conditions.     

运输能力柔性约束的供应链Pareto优化策略

针对单位产品运输成本对批量敏感并由生产商负责产品运输的情况,建立了供需双方在分散决策和集中决策情形下的最佳批量模型.分析结果表明运输能力柔性越强,生产商的最佳生产批量越小,与批发商要求的短周期、小批量订货越接近,从而在不增加成本的情况下,生产商能够对批发商的需求快速响应.且当运输能力非完全柔性时,生产商可以通过降低产品转让价格改让批发商负责产品运输,以使批发商在分散决策情形下的最佳订货批量更接近于生产商的最佳生产批量和供应链在集中决策情形下的订货批量,从而在供需方双赢的前提下实现整个供应链的利益优化.     

不同碳排放政策下考虑碳减排投入的供应链协调

在考虑碳减排技术投入下,为了实现不同碳排放政策下的供应链协调,通过建立集中式和分散式决策下的供应链模型,根据供应链协调的条件,给出了供应链实现协调的契约形式及契约参数。为了确定不同碳排放政策下的最优订货量和最优碳减排率,通过对博弈模型进行优化,提出了具体的求解方法。数值计算结果表明：随着碳排放政策的变化,供应链的最优订货量、最优碳减排率和供应链的利润也将发生相应的变化,而生产成本、缺货损失、产品残值、销售价格、批发价格等参数变化不仅会影响最优订货量、最优碳减排率和供应链利润,还会影响收益共享比例、碳减排技术投入和碳排放成本的分摊比例。     

不同市场结构下绿色闭环供应链决策分析

为了分析不同市场结构对绿色闭环供应链成员决策以及绩效的影响,引入环保参数,采用Stackelberg博弈法,比较了三种市场结构下渠道成员的决策、利润和渠道总利润。研究结果表明：制造商主导市场时批发价、零售价和制造商利润最高;零售商领导市场时回收水平、单位利润和零售商利润最高;环保水平和渠道总利润在垂直纳什市场结构下最高。理论上无领导者的垂直纳什结构最理想,但考虑实际情况,零售商控制市场时较好。     

Optimal economic production quantity policy for a parallel system with repair,rework, free-repair warranty and maintenance

Hot standby redundancy maintains the working order of a system, repairs offer restoration in case of failure, and preventive maintenance (PM) prevents trouble. Warranties provide assurance to customers, and a superior warranty signifies higher product quality. The running costs of redundancy, maintenance and warranties influence decisions during product manufacture. Therefore, this paper presents an economic production quantity (EPQ) model for a parallel system with maintenance, production, and free-repair warranty (FRW) programmes. The production system begins with a basic unit and produces conforming items. PM is performed after the production run period and is classified as imperfect or perfect. If the basic unit fails, it is repaired and returned to operation after perfect PM; the spare unit is online only during the repair time of the basic unit. The spare will produce some number of defective goods, which are reworked in the same inventory cycle. The hot spare is minimally repaired if it fails in its standby or online mode. In this study, an inferior item is defined as one that satisfies specifications on inspection and is usable but is likely to incur postsale servicing costs when sold under an FRW. The total cost of this EPQ model includes setup, holding, PM, restoration, minimal repair, and warranty costs. The optimal production runtime is determined by minimising the total cost. Several cases are discussed in this paper, and the proposed model is illustrated using a numerical example and sensitivity.     

Solving the multiple platforms configuration problem

The focus of manufacturing has been shifting from mass production to mass customization and producers are seeking ways to reduce production costs, still offering a competitive basket of products. One approach for implementing mass customization is to develop or produce products based on platform architecture. Variant products make use of the product platform as the starting point and then add or remove components to change features of the base product. This allows the manufacturer to offer the variety of products that meet market demands without developing each product independently. In this paper, we propose multiple platforms for the production of a given product family while minimizing the overall production cost. The methodology considers the demand for each product variant, with the decision variables as the optimal number of platforms, optimal configuration of each platform, and assignment of the products to the platforms. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer program, and both the optimal formulation and an evolutionary strategy based on Genetic Algorithm are presented. The approach is illustrated with an example from a family of cordless drills.     

An integrated framework for product line design for modular products: product attribute and functionality-driven perspective

The purpose of this research is to facilitate original equipment manufacturers operating in a single market segment to frame their product line design strategy that pertains to offering right product attributes with right attribute level in the right product profile within a market segment. Through this research, we attempt to establish a link between functional level design of product attributes with commercial objectives of the enterprise. Initially, by deriving the functional importance of product attribute levels of individual product attributes within a product profile, demand and functional importance data are generated. Utilising the function-based cost estimating framework and multi-linear regression methodology, we determine the cost and product development time coefficients for respective product attributes. Finally, a mixed integer quadratic programming-based mathematical formulation is developed that includes maximisation of product premium and minimisation of various costs as major objectives under the assumption that manufacturer seeks to offer optimal number of product profiles within the market segment. Employing the commercial solver LINGO, the integrated framework is solved. The entire framework is illustrated using the operator cabin of heavy construction machinery.     

Optimal policies in hybrid manufacturing/remanufacturing systems with random price-sensitive product returns

We study a production planning problem in which a manufacturer aims to meet a random market demand by manufacturing new product and remanufacturing returned product. The product returns are random and price-sensitive. To maximise his profit, the manufacturer needs to optimally decide on the acquisition price for the returned product as well as the quantities of the new product to be manufactured and the returned product to be remanufactured. We investigate two cases based on the relative lengths of the manufacturing and remanufacturing lead times. (1) In the case with a shorter manufacturing lead time, the manufacturer first decides his acquisition price for the returned product before the production starts, and then decides the quantities of manufacturing/remanufacturing after the product returns are realised. (2) In the case with a shorter remanufacturing lead time, the manufacturer first decides the manufacturing quantity and the acquisition price simultaneously, and then the remanufacturing quantity based on the quantity of manufactured and returned products. Each case is formulated as a two-stage stochastic optimisation problem, and the corresponding optimal polices of both are characterised and derived.