供应商成本信息不对称下装配系统协同问题研究

本文研究的装配系统由两个供应商和一个制造商组成,其中一个供应商的成本信息为公共信息,另一个供应商的成本信息为其私有信息,制造商通过设计契约来揭示该私有信息。作为装配系统的主导者,制造商一方面以自身利润最大化为目标,另一方面希望通过系统协同来获得更多的利润。研究结果表明,制造商对两个供应商都采用批发价契约时,无法揭示供应商的私有信息;制造商对信息公开的供应商采用批发价契约,对拥有私有信息的供应商采用价格补贴契约时,可以揭示供应商的私有信息,但不能实现装配系统的整体协同;制造商对两个供应商都采用价格补贴契约时,在成功揭示供应商的私有信息的同时,也实现了装配系统的整体协同。数值分析结果表明,同制造商对两个供应商分别提供批发价契约和价格补贴契约时相比,制造商对两个供应商都提供价格补贴契约时,私有信息的揭示区间会变大,系统总利润和拥有私有信息的供应商的利润会增加,信息公开的供应商的利润会降低,制造商的利润可能增加也可能降低。     

奖惩机制下零售商信息分享对闭环供应链的影响研究

研究奖惩机制下零售商的信息分享策略以及对闭环供应链的影响,建立了由制造商和零售商以及消费者组成的闭环供应链,其中制造商负责回收废旧产品并进行再制造。分别研究了集中式决策的情形和分散式决策下零售商信息分享和不分享的情形。研究发现,若政府在社会总福利目标中不考虑奖惩成本且回收难度较小时,零售商信息分享使社会总福利提高,反之,导致社会总福利降低;零售商信息分享总会使消费者剩余的期望值降低,但能够提高废旧产品的回收率。最后,针对零售商信息分享引起社会福利提高的情况设计了回收责任分担契约激励零售商分享信息。关键词:信息分享;奖惩机制;闭环供应链;社会福利;消费者剩余     

Contracting with an urgent supplier under cost information asymmetry

We investigate a contract setting problem faced by a manufacturer who can procure major modules from an overseas supplier, as well as a local supplier. The overseas supplier is prime and offers quality products, whereas the local supplier is viewed only as a backup, and its products are inferior in quality. As the local supplier needs to put in additional effort to fulfill the urgent orders, it is difficult for the manufacturer to estimate this urgent supplier’s production cost. This asymmetric cost information becomes an obstacle for the manufacturer in managing the urgent supplier. In this paper, we study two types of contingent contracts. One is the common price-only contract, and the other is a contract menu consisting of a transfer payment and a lead time quotation. We construct a Stackelberg game model and evaluate how the involvement of an urgent supplier with private cost information affects performances of the prime supplier and the manufacturer in different scenarios (with or without the urgent supplier, under different contingent contracts). We also conduct numerical experiments to show how the parameters of the contracts affect profits of the manufacturer.     

碳交易机制下考虑竞争和信息非对称的供应链协调研究

本文在碳交易机制下,考虑制造商之间存在竞争且减排成本系数为低碳制造商私有信息的情况,分别构建信息完全对称和信息非对称情形下的供应链模型,对低碳制造商减排率和产品销售价格进行决策。通过引入由批发价和成本共担组成的联合契约,促使低碳制造商传递真实的减排成本信息,并通过算例对碳交易价格和减排成本系数等进行灵敏度分析。研究发现:引入联合契约能够使得信息非对称下的供应链利润基本达到集中决策水平;碳交易价格的增加会激励制造商积极减排、降低碳排放总量、提高供应链利润;低碳制造商减排成本系数的降低有助于减少碳排放量、增加产品市场需求、实现供应链利润增长。     

信息不对称下混合渠道零售商创新投入的供应链影响研究

通过建立Stackelberg博弈模型,研究了在混合渠道下零售商创新投入对供应链的影响,分析了零售商创新成本系数信息对称和不对称两种情况下各方的决策变量和利润受创新成本系数,制造商对零售商创新信息掌握的不确定性程度,需求转移系数,市场潜力及创新潜力等的影响关系。研究结果发现制造商总能通过信息分享受益,另外得到了零售商愿意分享成本信息以及使得供应链整体受益的条件,这些为制造商信息分享决策提供了依据。最后通过算例分析对结果进行了验证。     

考虑消费者低碳偏好的供应链企业减排成本分摊比较研究

在低碳环境下,研究了单一制造商和单一零售商组成的两级低碳供应链成本分摊决策问题。考虑消费者具有环保意识,因此在购买产品时会考虑产品的碳排放。分别讨论了零售商参与减排成本分摊契约和双方Nash讨价还价成本分摊契约两种形式对碳减排、产品定价和整个供应链及其成员收益的影响。研究发现,在两种契约形式中,零售商都可以实现与制造商共同降低碳排放的目标,从而促进制造商提高碳减排率,提高供应链利润。但是基于Nash讨价还价方式的减排成本分摊契约的供应链绩效高于零售商成本分摊契约下的供应链绩效。同时消费者低碳偏好增加可以激励零售商更多地分摊减排成本,在此基础上,利用Nash讨价还价模型确定了零售商为制造商提供减排成本分摊的比例范围及其最优解。最后,通过数值分析验证了减排因子对不同决策结构的定价、零售商减排分摊比例、供应链利润等决策的影响。     

不对称信息下逆向供应链定价分析与对策

以博弈论为研究方法,对由零售商和制造商组成的逆向供应链的定价问题进行研究,通过分析在回收成本信息对称和信息不对称情况下逆向供应链中制造商和零售商的定价策略,得出了在信息不对称情况下,制造商承担更大的风险。因此制造商需要防范回收成本信息不对称带来的风险,文章进一步给出了制造商的信息甄别合同,通过合同制造商可以降低由回收成本信息不对称带来的风险。     

Contract and product quality in platform selling

More and more e-tailers (platforms) are allowing manufacturers direct access to customers. Two common contracts are offered by platforms to manufacturers: the revenue sharing contract where a platform appropriates a portion of the manufacturer’s revenue, and the fixed fee contract where a platform charges a fixed rent for each sale. Using an analytical model, this paper studies the interrelationship between a platform’s contract choice and a manufacturer’s product quality decision. We find that if product quality is exogenously given, the platform will always adopt the revenue sharing contract. If the manufacturer endogenously decides the quality, however, the platform’s contract choice may be changed. This is because the revenue sharing contract, compared to fixed fee, leads to a lower selling price of the manufacturer, whereas the fixed fee contract can motivate a higher quality than does revenue sharing. As a result, a large (small) market heterogeneity induces the platform to adopt the revenue sharing (fixed fee) contract. We also extend the model to several directions, finding that longer product line, manufacturer competition, lower marginal production cost, and higher platform cost all tend to induce the platform to put forward a fixed fee contract; while if quality decision is less flexible than contract decision, the platform is more ready to embrace revenue sharing. Besides, when there are two platforms competing for the same market, they should differentiate their contract choices so as to mitigate competition.     

A spatiotemporal Data Envelopment Analysis (S-T DEA) approach: the need to assess evolving units

We consider a two-stage supply chain with one supplier and one manufacturer. The manufacturer faces a Poisson demand process where the arrival rate depends on the selling price, the announced delivery time, and the delivery reliability defined as the probability of satisfying the announced delivery time. Such a demand model generalizes the works in the literature by simultaneously considering the above three demand sensitivity factors. The main purpose of this paper is to study the equilibrium decisions in the supply chain with an all-unit quantity discount contract. We consider four scenarios regarding whether the leadtime standard, the delivery reliability standard, and the manufacturer’s capacity are endogenous, and whether the manufacturer’s production cost is its private information. We find that an all-unit quantity discount scheme can coordinate the supply chain for most cases. Managerial insights are observed regarding the impact of the three demand sensitivity factors. For example, the breakpoint in an optimal quantity discount contract always increases with the delivery reliability sensitivity under an exogenous delivery reliability, but may decrease under an endogenous delivery reliability; with asymmetric information, a higher variance of the manufacturer’s unit production costs leads to a lower unit wholesale price for the low-cost manufacturer.     

Coordination of cooperative cost-reduction efforts in a supply chain partnership

We study cooperative cost reduction in a decentralized supply chain with a single manufacturer and multiple suppliers. The manufacturer assembles components that are procured from the suppliers to produce a final product. Both the manufacturer and the suppliers invest in reducing the unit production costs of the components. We see that neither of the two well-known conventional contracts, the wholesale price contract and the cost-plus pricing contract, generally coordinates the supply chain, i.e., under both of these types of contract, the individual optimal cost-reduction efforts of players deviate from the centralized system-optimal solution. However, this result is not surprising because these contracts encourage either only the manufacturer or only the suppliers alone to invest in cost reduction.     

Joint decision on production and pricing for online dual channel supply chain system

Online dual channel supply chain system and its joint decision on production and pricing under information asymmetry are investigated. First, optimal production and pricing strategies are depicted according to the centralized system. Next, two kinds of contracts are designed for the decentralized system to coordinate the channel system, and their production and pricing decisions are depicted using a principle-agent method for the asymmetric information on the traditional channel. Finally, some interesting insights are found: the centralized system is not always being better than the decentralized system with a feasible contract if the traditional and professional retailer has lower selling cost. When uncertainty in the traditional channel information is higher, the manufacturer prefers a menu of contracts according to different channel settings. When uncertainty is lower, the manufacturer prefers a single contract. Furthermore, the higher the uncertainty in the traditional channel, the more the information welfare of the traditional retailer will gain. Performance with a menu of contracts cannot outperform that with a single contract integrating optimistic and pessimistic market setting well; their difference in performance is bigger when uncertainty in the traditional channel information is less.     

供应链纵向结构对EPR政策激励效果的影响研究

为了揭示供应链纵向结构对EPR政策激励效果的影响,本文通过构建EPR政策约束下由上游制造商和下游客户所组成的供应链决策模型,分别在纵向一体化和纵向分离两种典型的供应链纵向市场结构下,考察了EPR政策对制造商环保性能和可循环性设计决策的激励影响。结果表明:在不同的供应链纵向结构下,由于制造商与客户之间的利益协调机制存在着差异,使得EPR政策对制造商环境设计选择的激励效果将发生变化。在纵向一体化结构下EPR政策对制造商可循环性的激励效果更强;而EPR政策对环保性能的激励在哪种供应链纵向结构下更强是不确定的,最终还取决于行业本身在生产成本和环境成本等方面的特征。最后,基于本文的研究结论给出了EPR政策与产业政策相配套的政策建议。     

Optimizing product service system by franchise fee contracts under information asymmetry

This paper studies the problem of how to effectively provide product service system (PSS) in a service-oriented manufacturing supply chain under asymmetric private demand information. The PSS in the supply chain is operated heterogeneously and complementarily, in which the manufacturer provides the product while the retailer who possesses private demand information is responsible for adding the necessary value-added service on the basic product. We address the issue of how different contracts affect the decisions and profitability of the supply chain members. Three types of contracts are developed to help supply chain partners to make decisions and enhance the supply chain’s efficiency. The first is the franchise fee (FF) contract, under which the manufacturer provides a two-part tariff contract (wholesale price and franchise fee) to influence the retailer’s decision and to detect her private demand information. The second is the franchise fee with service requirement (FFS) contract, under which the manufacturer specifies the service level required in addition to the two-part tariff contract terms. The third is the franchise fee with centralized service requirement (FFCS) contract, which is similar to the FFS contract but that the service level specified by the manufacturer is the system optimal solution. Our analytical results show that all three contracts enable the manufacturer to detect the retailer’s private demand information, with the FFCS contract achieving the greatest channel profit. Finally, numerical examples are presented, and sensitivity analysis of service level and profit are conducted to compare the performance of the three contracts under different settings. The paper provides managerial guidelines for the manufacturer in contract offering under different conditions.     

Channel incentives in sharing new product demand information and robust contracts

Demand for a new product is often highly uncertain. As the developer of a new product, the manufacturer may reduce the uncertainty of the product’s demand through observing progress in his product development process or receiving demand signals directly from customers. This paper first shows that a centralized channel always benefits from improved demand information. Yet, to realize this benefit in a decentralized manufacturer–retailer channel, the manufacturer needs to disclose his private demand information to the retailer. We show that the manufacturer’s incentive to share his improved demand information depends on the supply contract signed with the retailer. Furthermore, mandating the manufacturer to disclose his improved demand information can actually reduce the total channel profit. We provide managerial insights by analyzing three widely used contract forms. We investigate whether these contracts are robust under an unanticipated demand information update observed by the manufacturer. We show that the quantity flexibility contract with a high return rate is not robust. The buyback contract, however, is robust and always achieves information sharing while preserving channel performance.     

Coordination in a two-stage capacitated supply chain with multiple suppliers

The aim of this paper is to coordinate the inventory policies in a decentralized supply chain with stochastic demand by means of contracts. The system considered is a decentralized two-stage supply chain consisting of multiple independent suppliers and a manufacturer with limited production capacities. The suppliers operate on a make-to-stock basis and apply base stock policy to manage their inventories. On the other hand, the manufacturer employs a make-to-order strategy. Under the necessary assumptions, each supplier is modeled as an M/M/1 make-to-stock queue; and the manufacturer is modeled as a GI/M/1 queue after deriving an approximate distribution for the interarrival times of the manufacturer. Once the supply chain is modeled as a queuing system, centralized and decentralized models are developed. Comparison of the optimal solutions to these models reveals that the supply chain needs coordination. Three different transfer payment contracts are examined in this paper. These are the backorder and holding cost subsidy contracts, the transfer payment contract based on Pareto improvement, and the cost sharing contract. Each contract is evaluated according to its coordination ability and whether it is Pareto improving or not. The results indicate that all three contracts can coordinate the supply chain. However, when the Pareto improvement is taken into account, the cost sharing contract seems to be the one that will be preferred by all parties.     

销售市场和回收市场同时扰动下的闭环供应链协调应对

考虑一个闭环供应链由单个制造商和单个零售商组成,产品的制造和再制造由制造商负责,产品的销售和废旧品的回收由零售商负责。在建立博弈模型的基础上,首先分析了闭环供应链在收益共享契约下的协调性,接着分析了收益共享契约对突发事件下闭环供应链的协调应对。分析结果表明:当突发事件导致销售市场规模和废旧品回收市场初始规模同时发生变化时,闭环供应链的协调将被打破,为此对收益共享契约进行了调整,调整后的收益共享契约使闭环供应链具有抗突发事件性;最后,通过数值计算实例对此进行了验证分析。     

企业间信息共享的激励问题研究

本文考虑了一个零售商占主导地位但制造商具有市场需求信息优势的二级供应链系统;具体来说,制造商具有确定的市场需求信息,而零售商对市场需求信息仅仅有一个随机先验分布。本文讨论的问题是,当零售商设计采购合同时,制造商是否有意愿去改善零售商的需求信息？如果可能,是否零售商提供的合同越复杂越能激励制造商这么做呢？本文的研究结果表明,(i)制造商希望零售商需求估计的均值(即信息趋势)尽可能地低。但是对于需求估计的方差(即信息精度),则存在一个临界值,低于这个值时,制造商希望零售商需求的方差越大越好;高于这个值时,制造商希望零售商需求的方差越小越好,这意味着制造商在某种程度上愿意与零售商共享信息;(ii)复杂的合同并不能提供更多的激励去促使制造商共享信息。本文的结论意味着需要设计新的机制去促使制造商能够诚实地披露他的私有信息。     

Risk sharing and information revelation mechanism of a one-manufacturer and one-retailer supply chain facing an integrated competitor

This paper develops an information revelation mechanism model of a one-manufacturer and one-retailer supply chain facing an outside integrated-competitor under demand uncertainty. We investigate how the manufacturer designs a wholesale price-order quantity contract to induce the retailer to report his risk sensitivity information truthfully. We try to explore the effects of the outside competitor and the risk-sharing rule on the optimal price-service level decisions of the retailer and the optimal wholesale prices of the manufacturer. We find that the strategic interaction plays an important role in the effect of risk sensitivity on the order quantity for the retailer. When the fraction of the risk cost shared by the manufacturer is sufficiently large (small), the optimal wholesale price for the high risk-averse retailer is higher (lower) than that for the low risk-averse retailer.     

Consumer returns reduction and information revelation mechanism for a supply chain

In this paper, we develop two revelation mechanism models of a supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer under asymmetric information, where the retailer provides store assistance (SA) to reduce consumer returns rate and increase demand. Under full information, we find that a higher returns rate or returns handling cost increases the SA level if the market scale is sufficiently high. In the demand information asymmetry model, we find that: (i) the low-type retailer (facing a low demand) has no incentive to distort demand information while the high-type retailer may report wrong information; (ii) the manufacturer would like to design a menu of wholesale price-order quantity contract to induce truthful demand information and the manufacturer pays an information rent to the high-type retailer if the returns rate or returns handling cost for the retailer is sufficiently low; (iii) asymmetry of information does not change the monotonicity of the unit wholesale price in the retailer’s type, and information asymmetry decreases the retail price but increases the SA level. Unlike the demand information asymmetry model, a higher retailer’s returns handling cost expands the effects of information asymmetry on the retail price and the SA level, and using revelation mechanism decreases the channel profit if the retailer’s returns handling cost is sufficiently high under the returns rate information asymmetry model.     

双渠道模式下制造商线上定制策略研究

本文针对制造商在传统零售渠道和线上网络渠道同时销售标准产品的情况下,是否应该开放线上定制策略的相关问题进行分析。首先通过圆形市场模型完成市场划分;其次,在制造商不开放线上定制策略和开放线上定制策略两种情况下分别构建制造商和零售商利润最大化模型,得到了两种情况下的市场均衡结果。通过分析和比较两种情况下制造商和零售商的最优决策结果发现,当标准产品的边际生产成本较大且开放线上定制策略的成本较小时,制造商应该开放线上定制策略;制造商开放线上定制策略后,会使标准产品的批发价格和零售价格增加,并削弱零售商的利润;定制产品的生产成本越高,制造商开放定制产品的动机越小;消费者对标准产品的适应成本越高,制造商开放定制产品的动机越大。