Decision analysis and coordination of dual supply chain with retailer's offline return service and online reviews

Based on the centralized and decentralized decision-making cases, this study constructs a dual-channel supply chain game model that considers offline return service and online reviews, and explores the pricing decisions and benefits of supply chains under the dual influence of return service level and online reviews. The impact of return rate, return service level and perceived quality of online reviews on optimal supply chain decisions and profits are further analyzed. Finally, considering the phenomenon of double marginalization in the supply chain, this study coordinates the supply chain based on the benefit-sharing contract coordination model to achieve Pareto improvement. The research shows that: The manufacturer's optimal wholesale price, the optimal online selling price and the retailer's optimal offline price are positively correlated with the perceived quality of online reviews and the level of return service. Compared with the return service level, the perceived quality of online reviews has a greater impact on the overall profit of the supply chain. Under the dual influence of the perceived quality of online reviews and the level of return service, the supply chain profit in the centralized model is better than that in the decentralized model. The coordination model can effectively coordinate the supply chain. Moreover, when the sharing ratio of manufacturers is obviously lower than that of retailers, the coordination effect is better at this time.     

基于价格折扣的无资产型TPL提供者供应商选择模型

无资产型TPL提供者的出现．在为供应链主导企业实施集成供应链管理提供必备的物流技术支撑条件的同时,其自身也面临供应商管理问题。文章在阐述无资产型TPL提供者特征的基础上．建立了基于价格折扣的无资产型TPL提供者供应商选择与采购量分配模型。     

The link between supply chain fit and financial performance of the firm

The bottom-line financial impact of supply chain management has been of continuing interest. Building on the operations strategy literature, Fisher's (1997) conceptual framework, a survey of 259 U.S. and European manufacturing firms, and secondary financial data, we investigate the relationship between supply chain fit (i.e., strategic consistencies between the products’ supply and demand uncertainty and the underlying supply chain design) and the financial performance of the firm. The findings indicate that the higher the supply chain fit, the higher the Return on Assets (ROA) of the firm, and that firms with a negative misfit show a lower performance than firms with a positive misfit.     

考虑强势零售商压价和投资行为的供应链协调

中国流通产业的零供矛盾日益凸显,针对强势零售商的压价问题构建博弈模型并分析其对供应链协调的影响。在由单制造商和单零售商构成的二级供应链中,考虑零售商在主导产品零售价格的同时,通过增加广告投入或提高服务水平等市场投资措施刺激产品需求,探讨当零售商运用其较强的议价能力对制造商提出的批发价进行强制压价时,双方如何通过合作博弈寻找最佳策略。发现在一定的条件下,强势零售商的压价行为不仅可以提升品牌商誉,更能帮助实现供应链协调。     

基于订单生产的供应链价格与承诺交货时间决策和协调

针对订单生产需求受价格和承诺交货时间影响以及延期现象,建立由生产商和销售商组成的供应链价格与承诺交货时间决策模型。研究表明:最优承诺交货时间绑定在服务水平上,提高服务水平可以降低双重边际化效应;相对于集中决策,分散决策采用较高的价格和较短的承诺交货时间,其最优利润和最优需求较少;此外,采用收益分享方式构建了供应链协调模型,得出销售商收益分享比例处于某一范围内才能实现供应链的协调。     

考虑政府补贴的绿色供应链契约分析及优化研究

以政府、供应商和制造商组成的绿色供应链为研究对象,探讨政府补贴和供应链契约对绿色供应链绩效的影响。构建了批发价格契约、收益共享契约和数量折扣契约模型,比较分析了不同契约下各主体效益及契约选择偏好,设计了收益共享且绿色投入成本共担契约来提高供应链绩效。研究发现:消费者绿色偏好越强烈,产品绿色度和供应链各主体效益越高;当产品绿色度相等时,制造商更倾向于选择批发价格契约,而供应商和政府更倾向于选择收益共享契约或数量折扣契约;相较于其他契约,设计的收益共享且绿色投入成本共担契约可以提高产品绿色度和企业效益。本文为考虑政府补贴的绿色供应链企业决策及选择合理的合作契约提供了理论支持。     

Supply chain decisions and coordination in the presence of an imperfect spot market

This study considers a supply chain consisting of a commodity supplier and a final product manufacturer with uncertain demand. In addition to purchasing from the supplier through a forward contract, the manufacturer can adjust their inventory by trading the commodity in an online spot market after observing the actual demand. However, the spot market is imperfect in that transactions cannot be certainly realized and come with additional transaction costs. Furthermore, the spot price is volatile such that overly relying on the spot market is unwise. To investigate how the spot market affects the decisions and coordination in a supply chain, we develop a game-theoretical model incorporating spot trading. We derive the optimal ordering decision in a centralized supply chain, as well as the supplier's and manufacturer's equilibrium pricing and ordering decisions in a decentralized supply chain. The impact of the imperfect spot market on the optimal decisions and profits is analyzed. This study also demonstrates how the supply chain can be coordinated in the presence of an imperfect spot market. Finally, a numerical analysis is performed to examine the analytical results. Our results indicate that the spot market can generally improve the performance of the centralized supply chain and benefit the manufacturer in the decentralized one. However, it can be detrimental to the supplier. The supply chain can be coordinated by a revenue-sharing contract, and both parties' profits can be improved. Our findings suggest that the manufacturer could take advantage of the spot market, and the supplier should attempt to integrate or coordinate the supply chain to share the benefits of spot trading.     

不对称信息的供应链激励机制研究

研究由单个制造商和单个零售商组成二级供应链,基于市场需求是线性的,且受价格与销售努力的影响。首先,研究在对称信息下,集中模式和分散模式两种情况下的供应链,求出制造商和零售商使得利润达到最优时的最优批发价及销售价;其次,研究了在信息不对称情况下,制造商的机制设计问题,得到了制造商激励批发价的表达式以及零售商的最优零售价的公式;最后利用实例仿真对模型进行分析,结果表明该激励机制对整个供应链的收益有改善作用。     

Government subsidy provision in biomass energy supply chains

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the government’s optimal subsidy provision strategy for a biomass energy supply chain that consists of the power plant, the villagers’ committee and farmer. We examine three possible subsidy provision strategies depending on which party (the power plant, the villagers’ committee or the farmer) the government chooses to subsidise, and compare how it can influence the government’s target by assuming that the subsidy price is exogenously given. We also extend our findings when the government can endogenously determine the subsidy price. Moreover, our analyses reveal the optimal stakeholder selection strategy for each party to maximise its payoff.     

Time-sensitive supply chain disruption recovery and resource sharing incentive strategy

Market demand is becoming increasingly time-sensitive in competitive environments. Hence, supply disruptions will have a more serious impact on the profits of supply chains. This study applies a Stackelberg competition between a single supplier and a single manufacturer in a time-sensitive supply chain in a cloud manufacturing environment. We aim to address the supplier’s production capacity recovery issues and the manufacturer’s incentive decision issues after supply disruption. We find that the supplier is in a weak position when the information is symmetrical. The manufacturer can encourage the supplier to shorten the recovery time by raising the unit wholesale price. When the supplier’s unit production cost remains unchanged but the unit wholesale price increases, the profit of the supplier first increases and then decreases. In addition, under the centralized decision-making setting, the optimal recovery time of the supplier is shorter and the optimal unit market price of the product is lower than that under decentralized decision-making. We further find that resource sharing can shorten the optimal recovery time, but it does not necessarily play an incentivizing role.     

基于制造商服务的供应链竞争策略分析

本文以一个具有两家制造商和一家零售商组成的供应链结构为研究对象,探讨了制造商向顾客提供服务的重要性,并着重分析了在零售商占据市场优势的情况下,制造商的定价与服务策略,以及零售商制定产品零售价格时要考虑的主要因素,其结果对企业在供应链体系中制定经营策略具有一定的帮助。     

客户盈余表现对供应商企业创新投资的影响研究

基于资源依赖理论和信号传递理论，利用手工收集的供应商企业-客户对均为上市公司的数据，系统考察客户盈余表现对供应商企业创新投资的影响。研究发现，客户盈余表现越好，越能促进供应商企业的创新投资。调节作用研究发现，供应链关系越稳定、越趋于良性，供应链企业的协同效应越明显，即高盈余客户对供应商企业创新投资的正向影响越强；企业与客户的产品多元化程度越低，客户盈余表现对供应商企业创新投资的正向影响越显著；高盈余客户通过降低供应商企业经营风险促进了供应商企业创新投资。进一步分析发现，供应商企业市场竞争程度越高、融资约束程度越高、客户相对议价能力越强，客户盈余表现对供应商企业创新投资的正向影响越会显著增强。研究结论拓展了客户盈余表现经济后果的理论边界，对推动供应链整合及供给侧结构性改革具有重要的启示意义。     

Concentrated supply chain membership and financial performance: Chain- and firm-level perspectives

This study reports evidence that concentrated 3-firm supply chains achieve superior financial performance, and that supply chains’ financial performance varies systematically with measures of chain concentration and chain duration. Results from firm-level analyses suggest that the profitability benefits of supply chain relationships are captured predominantly by downstream chain members, whereas cash cycle benefits are realized throughout the supply chain. Firm-level tests also reveal that chain members’ financial performance varies systematically with measures of downstream bargaining power, downstream relationship duration, and degree of supply consolidation. The study's chain- and firm-level analyses employ data extracted from sample firms’ publicly available financial reports, including their major customer disclosures under Statement of Financial Accounting Standards Nos. 131 (1997) and 14 (1976).     

Supply chain planning of vaccine and pharmaceutical clusters under uncertainty: The case of COVID-19

As an abrupt epidemic occurs, healthcare systems are shocked by the surge in the number of susceptible patients' demands, and decision-makers mostly rely on their frame of reference for urgent decision-making. Many reports have declared the COVID-19 impediments to trading and global economic growth. This study aims to provide a mathematical model to support pharmaceutical supply chain planning during the COVID-19 epidemic. Additionally, it aims to offer new insights into hospital supply chain problems by unifying cold and non-cold chains and considering a wide range of pharmaceuticals and vaccines. This approach is unprecedented and includes an analysis of various pharmaceutical features such as temperature, shelf life, priority, and clustering. To propose a model for planning the pharmaceutical supply chains, a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is used for a four-echelon supply chain design. This model aims to minimize the costs involved in the pharmaceutical supply chain by maintaining an acceptable service level. Also, this paper considers uncertainty as an intrinsic part of the problem and addresses it through the wait-and-see method. Furthermore, an unexplored unsupervised learning method in the realm of supply chain planning has been used to cluster the pharmaceuticals and the vaccines and its merits and drawbacks are proposed. A case of Tehran hospitals with real data has been used to show the model's capabilities, as well. Based on the obtained results, the proposed approach is able to reach the optimum service level in the COVID conditions while maintaining a reduced cost. The experiment illustrates that the hospitals' adjacency and emergency orders alleviated the service level significantly. The proposed MILP model has proven to be efficient in providing a practical intuition for decision-makers. The clustering technique reduced the size of the problem and the time required to solve the model considerably.     

基于价格折扣的物流服务供应链协调模型研究

在一个物流服务集成商与一个物流服务提供商及一个客户构成的物流服务供应链中,文章建立了各个利益主体的利润模型及物流服务供应链的整体利润模型,并分别求解了其最优解,通过对模型的分析和求解,得出各个利益主体与整体供应链的最优解存在矛盾。为了协调这个利益矛盾,提出了利用价格折扣契约来对物流服务供应链进行协调,并计算得出价格折扣系数的取值范围,最后给出了算例以证明这种契约对物流服务供应链的协调具有有效性。     

Sustainability in multi-tier supply chains: Understanding the double agency role of the first-tier supplier

In light of the growing complexity of globally dispersed, multi-tier supply chains, the involvement of first-tier suppliers has become instrumental in the quest for achieving sustainability compliance along the supply chain. We describe this new responsibility as the double agency role. We employ agency and institutional theory arguments to explore the conditions under which first-tier suppliers will act as agents who fulfill the lead firm's sustainability requirements (i.e., the primary agency role) and implement these requirements in their suppliers' operations (i.e., the secondary agency role). The findings from three in-depth case studies embedded in different institutional contexts highlight the importance for lead firms to incentivize each agency role separately and to reduce information asymmetries, particularly at the second-tier level. In addition, our inductive analysis reveals several contingency factors that influence the coupling of the secondary agency role of the first-tier supplier. These factors include resource availability at the first-tier supplier's firm, the lead firm's focus on the triple-bottom-line dimension (i.e., environmental or social), the lead firm's use of power, and the lead firm's internal alignment of the sustainability and purchasing function. We integrate our findings in a conceptual framework that advances the research agenda on multi-tier sustainable supply chains, and we subsequently outline the practical implications of assigning the double agency role to first tier suppliers.     

The geography of suppliers and retailers

In the last decades, supply chains have increasingly transcended national boundaries developing into global supply chains. Along with the many opportunities arising from international sourcing and the extended commercial presence over the world, the management of a globally dispersed supply chain is highly complex. A key issue to consider when dealing with the global supply chain design is the location of facilities, not only with respect to firms' owned facilities but also the supply and distribution side as factors that affect supply chain complexity and operational performance. This paper sets out a methodological framework to characterize the geographical configuration of a firm's suppliers and retailer networks. Quantitative indexes of network spatial concentration and relative proximity measures based on a nonparametric kernel density estimator are developed to identify both intra- and inter-firm patterns between the supply and point of sales' distributions. The method is first described by means of a series of theoretical-illustrative examples and exemplified by analyzing the geographical dispersion of four practical cases from the fashion-textile industry (i.e., Adidas, Benetton, C&A, and Puma). Subsequently, managerial implications and potential use of the metrics are discussed, showing how the proposed approach can support researchers and practitioners to improve supply chain location decisions and logistic integration, and evaluate changes in either the purchasing or distribution strategy.     

考虑产品替代和环保水平的供应链优化与协调

针对由单个制造商和单个零售商构成的供应链,考虑制造商生产两种碳足迹不同的可替代的产品,建立供应链优化决策模型,确定最优的产品环保水平与销售价格,提出供应链系统的协调机制.分析了产品之间不同的替代程度对均衡解和各成员利润的影响,并进一步讨论了收益共享契约对于提高供应链环境的作用.研究表明,产品环保水平竞争强度的增加会带来供应链成员利润的增加而价格竞争强度的增加会带来供应链成员利润的减少.集中式决策不仅有利于供应链利润的提高,而且有利于供应链环境的改善.当消费者对产品之间环保水平的敏感程度较高时,收益共享契约的协调效果较好.     

The effect of an ambidextrous supply chain strategy on combinative competitive capabilities and business performance

This study investigates the influence of an ambidextrous supply chain strategy on manufacturers’ combinative competitive capabilities – the ability to excel simultaneously on competitive capabilities of quality, delivery, flexibility, and cost – and, in turn, on business performance. Drawing upon March's (1991) notions of exploration and exploitation, an ambidextrous supply chain strategy is conceptualized as a simultaneous pursuit of both explorative and exploitative supply chain practices. We operationalize this concept as a second-order latent construct that captures the co-variation between exploration and exploitation within the context of a manufacturer's supply chain management strategy. Using survey-based data gathered from 174 U.S. manufacturers, we find that an ambidextrous supply chain strategy coincides with combinative competitive capabilities and business performance. Our empirical finding contradicts conventional wisdom that argues for tradeoffs between exploration and exploitation. Instead, our empirical results are in line with an emerging complementarity view advocating that supply chain managers build practices to gain operational efficiency while simultaneously searching for opportunities to gain operational advantages. In addition, we provide insights regarding the role of combinative capabilities in mediating the relationship between an ambidextrous supply chain strategy and business performance.     

Efficiency meets accountability: Performance implications of supply chain configuration, control, and capabilities

The public increasingly holds firms accountable for social and environmental outcomes, such as product toxicity problems and human rights violations, throughout their global supply chains. How can companies improve the social and environmental performance within their supply chains, particularly as other competitive pressures, such as cost and quality, continue to escalate? Starting from an efficient versus responsive supply chain framework, we develop an integrative model that blends together elements of supply chain configuration, stakeholder management, and capability development. Specifically, we spotlight the dimensions of control and accountability that collectively determine stakeholder exposure, and show how this new construct affects the linkages between supply chain capabilities, configuration, and performance. In particular, this analysis reveals that the nature of stakeholder exposure determines how social/environmental technical and relational capabilities impact social and environmental outcomes. We conclude with implications for research and practice, discussing how current supply chain theories must be extended to incorporate external stakeholders, to clarify strategies and identify potential pitfalls, and to better predict performance outcomes.