Impact of information sharing and lead time on bullwhip effect and on-hand inventory

This work analyzes a two echelon (warehouse–retailer) serial supply chain to study the impact of information sharing (IS) and lead time on bullwhip effect and on-hand inventory. The customer demand at the retailer is assumed to be an autoregressive (AR(1)) process. Both the echelons use a minimum mean squared error (MMSE) model for forecasting lead time demand (LTD), and follow an adaptive base-stock inventory policy to determine their respective order quantities. For the cases of without IS and inter as well as intra echelon IS, expressions for the bullwhip effect and on-hand inventory for the warehouse are obtained, considering deterministic lead-time. The results are compared with the previous research work and an easy analysis of the various bullwhip effect expressions under different scenarios, is done to understand the impact of IS on the bullwhip effect phenomenon. It is shown that some part of bullwhip effect will always remain even after sharing both inter as well as intra echelon information. Further, with the help of a numerical example it is shown that the lead time reduction is more beneficial in comparison to the sharing of information in terms of reduction in the bullwhip effect phenomenon.     

项目管理中业主-承包商最优激励模型研究

为解决项目管理中承包商不努力工作的问题,运用信息经济学中的委托代理理论,建立了业主一承包商间的激励数学模型.构造了努力产出函数和努力成本函数,求出了业主的最优激励水平以及相应的承包商最优努力水平,给出了业主的最优激励合同安排.最后,通过一个简化算例求出了模型均衡解的解析式,结果表明模型的结论是符合工程项目实际的,从而本模型能够为业主的激励合同设计提供指导.     

On proper secrets, (<Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis>, <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>)-bases and linear codes

This paper contains three parts where each part triggered and motivated the subsequent one. In the first part (Proper Secrets) we study the Shamir’s “k-out-of-n” threshold secret sharing scheme. In that scheme, the dealer generates a random polynomial of degree k−1 whose free coefficient is the secret and the private shares are point values of that polynomial. We show that the secret may, equivalently, be chosen as any other point value of the polynomial (including the point at infinity), but, on the other hand, setting the secret to be any other linear combination of the polynomial coefficients may result in an imperfect scheme. In the second part ((t, k)-bases) we define, for every pair of integers t and k such that 1 ≤ t ≤ k−1, the concepts of (t, k)-spanning sets, (t, k)-independent sets and (t, k)-bases as generalizations of the usual concepts of spanning sets, independent sets and bases in a finite-dimensional vector space. We study the relations between those notions and derive upper and lower bounds for the size of such sets. In the third part (Linear Codes) we show the relations between those notions and linear codes. Our main notion of a (t, k)-base bridges between two well-known structures: (1, k)-bases are just projective geometries, while (k−1, k)-bases correspond to maximal MDS-codes. We show how the properties of (t, k)-independence and (t, k)-spanning relate to the notions of minimum distance and covering radius of linear codes and how our results regarding the size of such sets relate to known bounds in coding theory. We conclude by comparing between the notions that we introduce here and some well known objects from projective geometry.      

Optimal investment strategies and risk-sharing arrangements for a hybrid pension plan

A continuous time stochastic model is used to study a hybrid pension plan, where both the contribution and benefit levels are adjusted depending on the performance of the plan, with risk sharing between different generations. The pension fund is invested in a risk-free asset and multiple risky assets. The objective is to seek an optimal investment strategy and optimal risk-sharing arrangements for plan trustees and participants so that this proposed hybrid pension system provides adequate and stable income to retirees while adjusting contributions effectively, as well as keeping its sustainability in the long run. These goals are achieved by minimizing the expected discount disutility of intermediate adjustment for both benefits and contributions and that of terminal wealth in finite time horizon. Using the stochastic optimal control approach, closed-form solutions are derived under quadratic loss function and exponential loss function. Numerical analysis is presented to illustrate the sensitivity of the optimal strategies to parameters of the financial market and how the optimal benefit changes with respect to different risk aversions. Through numerical analysis, we find that the optimal strategies do adjust the contributions and retirement benefits according to fund performance and model objectives so the intergenerational risk sharing seem effectively achieved for this collective hybrid pension plan.     

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.     

基于TAM理论的顾客心理契约形成机理研究——B2C情景下的实证研究

基于TAM理论研究了B2C情景下顾客心理契约的形成机理。通过相关文献评述,提出了B2C情景下顾客心理契约形成机理模型及假设,通过实证分析验证模型及假设。结果表明:感知易用和感知风险对感知有用具有显著的影响作用;感知有用以及感知易用通过顾客价值观/态度对顾客心理契约具有显著的影响;同时,感知风险和感知易用对顾客心理契约具有显著的直接影响作用。研究结论对B2C情景下服务商保持和维护客户关系具有积极作用,为网络商家建立积极地调控干预机制,促进顾客心理契约正效应感知提供参考。     

收益管理中单产品动态定价的稳健模型研究

在收益管理的动态定价模型的研究中,由传统的确定性模型和随机模型所得到的定价策略常常受限制于需求估计的准确性,当对需求的估计出现偏差时定价策略可能达不到最大化收益的目的,因此定价策略即最优解的稳健性越来越受到研究者的重视。针对需求函数系数的不确定性,在未知需求分布的条件下,应用稳健最优化思想,提出了一种稳健的动态定价模型,并对模型的最优解和最大收益进行了数值模拟分析。     

以权分担三个值的亚纯函数

该文处理了以权分担三个值的亚纯函数唯一性问题, 获得的结果改进了文献[1]的全部结果.     

Optimal corrective maintenance contract planning for aging multi‐state system

This paper considers an aging multi‐state system, where the system failure rate varies with time. After any failure, maintenance is performed by an external repair team. Repair rate and cost of each repair are determined by a corresponding corrective maintenance contract with a repair team. The service market can provide different kinds of maintenance contracts to the system owner, which also can be changed after each specified time period. The owner of the system would like to determine a series of repair contracts during the system life cycle in order to minimize the total expected cost while satisfying the system availability. Operating cost, repair cost and penalty cost for system failures should be taken into account. The paper proposes a method for determining such optimal series of maintenance contracts. The method is based on the piecewise constant approximation for an increasing failure rate function in order to assess lower and upper bounds of the total expected cost and system availability by using Markov models. The genetic algorithm is used as the optimization technique. Numerical example is presented to illustrate the approach. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Elementary symmetric polynomials in Shamir's scheme

The concept of k-admissible tracks in Shamir's secret sharing scheme over a finite field was introduced by Schinzel et al. (2009) [10]. Using some estimates for the elementary symmetric polynomials, we show that the track (1,…,n) over Fp is practically always k-admissible; i.e., the scheme allows to place the secret as an arbitrary coefficient of its generic polynomial even for relatively small p. Here k is the threshold and n the number of shareholders.