A Dynamic Supplier Selection and Inventory Management Model for a Serial Supply Chain with a Novel Supplier Price Break Scheme and Flexible Time Periods

A new supplier price break and discount scheme taking into account order frequency and lead time is introduced and incorporated into an integrated inventory planning model for a serial supply chain that minimizes the overall incurred cost including procurement, inventory holding, production, and transportation. A mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation is presented addressing this multi-period, multi-supplier, and multi-stage problem with predetermined time-varying demand for the case of a single product. Then, the length of the time period is considered as a variable. A new MILP formulation is derived when each period of the model is split into multiple sub-periods, and under certain conditions, it is proved that the optimal solution and objective value of the original model form a feasible solution and an upper bound for the derived model. In a numerical example, three scenarios of the derived model are solved where the number of sub-period is set to 2, 3, and 4. The results further show the decrease of the optimal objective value as the length of the time period is shortened. Sufficient evidence demonstrates that the length of the time period has a significant influence on supplier selection, lot sizing allocation, and inventory planning decisions. This poses the necessity of the selection of appropriate length of a time period, considering the trade-off between model complexity and cost savings.     

Vendor managed inventory contracts – coordinating the supply chain while looking from the vendor’s perspective

The paper studies coordination of a supply chain when the inventory is managed by the vendor (VMI). We also provide a general mathematical framework that can be used to analyze contracts under both retailer managed inventory (RMI) and VMI. Using a simple newsvendor scenario with a single vendor and single retailer, we study five popular coordinating supply chain contracts: buyback, quantity flexibility, quantity discount, sales rebate, and revenue sharing contracts. We analyze the ability of these contracts to coordinate the supply chain under VMI when the vendor freely decides the quantity. We find that even though all of them coordinate under RMI, quantity flexibility and sales rebate contracts do not generally coordinate under VMI. Furthermore, buyback and revenue sharing contracts are equivalent. Hence, we propose two new contracts which coordinate under VMI (one of which coordinates under RMI too, provided a well-known assumption holds). Finally, we extend our analysis to consider multiple independent retailers with the vendor incurring linear or convex production cost, and show that our results are qualitatively unchanged.     

Bullwhip effect in a supply chain model with multiple delivery delays

We develop a model of differential equations for a supply chain with delivery time delays between every adjacent firms. Based on the supply chain model, we provide a new perspective of the bullwhip effect and show that the bullwhip effect is intrinsic in supply chains in the sense that the equilibrium state of each firm in the supply chain is a cumulative forward product of the ratios of order fulfillment and placement between adjacent firms toward the end customer demand. We also show that it is the multiple time delays instead of the constant end consumer demand that determine the stability of the equilibrium states. However, the consumer demand has impacts on the stability of the equilibrium states of the supply chain when the end retailer’s inventory decisions are linearly related to the end consumer demand.     

Got organic milk? Joint inventory model with supply uncertainties and partial substitution

We study the joint inventory problem for two partially substitutable (organic and regular) products with different levels of supply reliability. Increasing substitution rate results in a decreased organic order but an increased regular order, as the regular product becomes an effective substitute during the organic product's stock-out. Higher disruption risk increases the order size of both products, but higher yield uncertainty only increases the organic order size whereas the regular order size decreases or remains unchanged.     

基于利润—CVaR的期权契约供应链协调

文章以一个风险厌恶销售商与风险中性供应商所组成的两级供应链为背景,以条件风险价值(CVaR)和期望利润的加权平均作为销售商的决策目标,对期权契约下销售商的订购策略及供应链协调问题进行了研究,并对比分析了销售商以CVaR为目标时的情形。在给出销售商在不同风险厌恶程度下的最优订购策略后,文章进一步给出了供应链相应的协调条件,并分析了此时期权权利金,销售商的风险厌恶程度和期望利润权重等参数对供销双方收益的影响,发现“利润-CVaR”法下销售商的风险厌恶程度对供销双方利润的影响与CVaR法下的情况有所不同,但权利金依然起到了分配整体供应链利润的作用,且销售商期望利润权重的增加会降低自身收益水平而提高供应商利润。最后,文章通过数值模拟的方式对上述结论进行了验证。     

加热模型及其最优控制

本文应用Pontryagin最大值原理研究加热过程,提出一个在加热过程中节能的最优控制方案。     

基于Petri Net的需求流动网组建模型及其稳定性分析

针对供应链概念不足,提出需求流动网概念,并论述了需求流动网概念模型,运用Petri网理论建立需求流动网模型,并对模型进行了分析,随后在分析需求流动网稳定性内涵的基础上,进一步运用Petri网理论分析了需求流动网稳定性,并最终得出了相应结论.     

保险赔付中的最优对冲策略

本文对带有付费过程$A_t$的保险公司在金融市场$(S_t,Q_t,B_t)$上通过购买股票$S_t$、兑换外币$Q_t$以及购买无风险资产$B_t$的投资过程而采取的最优投资策略, 使保险公司所面临的风险最小进行探讨. 利用Galtchouk-Kunita-Watanabe分解定理将风险表达式重新表达, 从而找到保险公司所能采取的风险最小的最优对冲策略. 文中举出一个具有现实性意义的例子将文章的重要结论加以应用, 使本文更具有应用价值.     

Supply chain scheduling: Just-in-time environment

We study the benefits of coordinated decision making in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, a distributor, and several retailers. The distributor bundles finished goods produced by the manufacturer and delivers them to the retailers to meet their demands. The distributor is responsible for managing finished goods inventory. An optimal production schedule of the manufacturer, if imposed on the distributor, may result in an increased inventory holding cost for the distributor. On the other hand, an optimal distribution schedule of the distributor, if imposed on the manufacturer, may result in an increased production cost for the manufacturer. In this paper we develop mathematical models for individual optimization goals of the two partners and compare the results of these models with the results obtained for a joint optimization model at the system level. We investigate the computational complexities of these scheduling problems. The experimental results indicate that substantial cost savings can be achieved at the system level by joint optimization. We also study conflict and cooperation issues in the supply chain. The cost of conflict of a supply chain partner is a measure of the amount by which the unconstrained optimal cost increases when a decision is to be made under the scheduling constraint imposed by the other partner. We quantify these conflicts and show that the cost of conflicts are significant. We also show that a cooperative decision will generate a positive surplus in the system which can be shared by the two partners to make cooperation and coordination strategy more attractive.     

Resale price maintenance in supply chains with general multiplicative demand

We analyze a supply chain with a Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) contract in which the manufacturer sets the retail price with a general multiplicative price–demand function and prove the existence/uniqueness of an equilibrium. We also compare the equilibrium prices and quantities, consumer surplus and total system welfare for the RPM and wholesale price contracts. We conclude that a manufacturer may capture a smaller share of the total supply chain profit despite her ability to set the retail price.