Quality improvement in competing supply chains

In this study, we consider quality improvement in a given segment of the market, shared by two supplier-manufacturer supply chains which offer a given product at the same price but compete on quality. The mechanism on the selection of supply chain structures and quality improvement strategies of the two supply chains is described. In particular, we analyze three possible structure combinations: two integrated supply chains, two decentralized supply chains, and one integrated and one decentralized supply chains. Between the supply chains, Nash's non-cooperative game is implemented. Numerical experiments illustrate the mechanism and some related issues are discussed.     

Trade promotion mode choice and information sharing in fashion retail supply chains

Trade promotion has a significant impact on the retail business, particularly in the fashion sectors. Manufacturers have traditionally been concerned with the inefficiency of trade promotion due to the low pass-through rate of the trade deals from retailers to customers. The scan-back (SB) trade deal, which monitors a retailer's sales via an IT system, benefits the manufacturer, but may or may not benefit the retailer. We provide insight into when a retailer in a two-stage supply chain has incentive to accept the SB trade deal. We show that (1) the manufacturer and the entire supply chain can always benefit from the SB trade deal while the retailer benefits only under some conditions, and that (2) both the retailer and the manufacturer can benefit from the SB trade deal if the SB deal is accompanied by a buyback (BB) contract. We examine the effect of a retailer's confidential pass-through rate on both the retailer's and the manufacturer's incentives to use the SB trade deal.     

Designing supply chains: Towards theory development

This paper describes a typology for designing supply chains that work in harmony to design, produce, and deliver products with different characteristics and customer expectations. This research discusses supply chain types that are necessary for success across three types of products: standard, innovative, and hybrid. It develops a framework for categorizing the supply chain types according to product characteristics and stage of the product life cycle. The key success factor for a product change as the product moves through its life cycle, and this may require different supply chain characteristics and capabilities. The paper blends literature and theory development with cases study research to create the typology and develop a set of research questions for further investigation.     

Information sharing and profit allotment based on supply chain cooperation

To maximize customer value created by a supply chain system as a whole, one of the key issues in supply chain management is how to have profit and benefit properly shared between partners in an effective manner of the supply chain integration. In this regard, information sharing between partners plays a rather important role in business process and management integration of the supply chain. The paper focuses on analyzing the value created from information sharing by decreasing inventory level and on investigating the collaborative mechanism of providing incentive to retailer by upstream partner via sharing profit gained information sharing in the context of three-echelon supply chain system. The issue of dealing with the interest conflict between the supply chain as a whole and individual partners is addressed based on information sharing analysis by means of cooperative game approach, a graphic model with three-dimensions is developed to depict the possible cooperative solutions of profit allotment between partners, and a problem solving method addressing how the profit allotment between partners can effectively motivate the partners to be cooperative with each other is presented as well.     

The relationship between legitimacy,reputation, sustainability and branding for companies and their supply chains

This paper aims at filling a gap that we perceive to exist in the scientific literature as to legitimacy, reputation and sustainability and their interrelationship to corporate and supply chain branding. A series of innovative theoretical frameworks are provided interrelating companies and their value (supply) chains with legitimacy, reputation, and branding which are essential conditions to achieve sustainability and competitive advantage based on dyadic and social context consonance to the benefit of society and all stakeholders involved. An urgently required better understanding of the concepts and their interrelations is enhanced by a synthesized explanatory basis entailing an eclectic mosaic of interdisciplinary theories (institutionalist, neo-institutionalist theories, the viable system approach, isomorphism and identity) to improve corporate and supply chain performance. To better inform managerial practice the theoretical considerations are spiced with case studies among which especially the currently debated supply chain case of the European horse meat scandal is illuminated suggesting concrete managerial cross-functional implications in the food industry. The paper culminates in the call for a newly to-be-established marketing stream we call ‘Sustainable and Curative Marketing’.     

Retailer policy, uncertainty reduction, and supply chain performance

We investigate how the retailer’s inventory policy affects the total cost of a serial supply chain. When the retailer uses the locally optimal (s,S) policy, there is randomness in order time and order quantity to the supplier whereas the supplier sees randomness only in order quantity for the suboptimal (R,T) policy and only in order time for another suboptimal (Q,r) policy. Using an extensive computational study, we find that the suboptimal policies perform better from the total supply chain perspective. The benefit of policy changes is magnified when the retailer costs are low, when the supplier costs are high, and when there is information sharing.     

Knowledge and information flows in supply chains: A study on pharmaceutical companies

A great deal of attention in the supply chain management literature is devoted to study material and demand information flows and their coordination. But in many situations, supply chains may convey information from different nature, they may be an important channel companies have to deliver knowledge, or specifically, technical information to the market. This paper studies the technical flow and highlights its particular requirements. Drawing upon a qualitative field research, it studies pharmaceutical companies, since those companies face a very specific challenge: consumers do not have discretion over their choices, ethical drugs must be prescribed by physicians to be bought and used by final consumers. Technical information flow is rich, and must be redundant and early delivered at multiple points. Thus, apart from the regular material channel where products and order information flow, those companies build a specialized information channel, developed to communicate to those who need it to create demand. Conclusions can be extended to supply chains where products and services are complex and decision makers must be clearly informed about technology-related information.     

Assessing performance of utilizing organizational modularity to manage supply chains: Evidence in the US manufacturing sector

Recent competition and customization have motivated manufacturers to institute modular organizations to manage supply chains. Proclaimed as a paradigm shift, organizational modularity manifests agility and flexibility to diversify product offerings, utilize production capacity, and allocate network capital and assets. Whereas studies have conceptualized the impacts of modular organizations, large-scale research that examines modularity's impacts on performance are lacking. The study assesses the impacts of organizational modularity in the US manufacturing sector. A set of hypotheses proposes that higher level of modularity is associated with higher efficiency and profitability. I found modularity to negatively affect product specialization and positively impact capacity utilization, ROI and ROA. The findings help to determine the robustness of utilizing the modularity for complex supply chain coordination.     

Electronic marketplaces and supply chain relationships

Electronic marketplaces and supply chain management (SCM) are two notions, which have attracted much attention among both academicians and practitioners during the last 5 years. However, the discussion of the relationship between the two notions has been limited and fragmented. In this paper, we will present a critical summary of the discussion of Internet-driven electronic marketplaces (IEMPs) based on an extensive literature review. Then, we will discuss the interrelation between IEMP and SCM from a procurement portfolio perspective. Our proposition is that different types of buyer-supplier relationships require different types of IEMPs. We propose a relationship/IEMP-grid that should help to identify the right selection strategy for IEMP in various procurement situations. Finally, we present proposals for future research within this area.     

The role of e-marketplaces in supply chain management

Electronic marketplaces (e-marketplaces) have a profound influence on the way in which organizations manage their supply chains. Proponents of the e-marketplace concept suggest that web-based trading systems, such as World Wide Retail Exchange (WWRE) and GlobalNetXchange (GNX), would enable companies to more efficiently buy, sell, and manage their supply chain processes on a global scale. This study investigates the extent to which e-business tools of the e-marketplace are used by channel members in the retail sector for business-to-business supply chain management (SCM). The study is based on a survey involving food service companies, retailers, and wholesalers in the UK. It is shown that the e-marketplace supply chain applications enable the majority of companies to automate transaction-based activities and procurement-related processes rather than strategic supply chain activities. The results also indicate that full participation in e-marketplaces requires companies to integrate their internal and external supply chain activities and share strategic information.     

An autonomous multi-agent approach to supply chain event management

Organizations have made a significant effort to implement software for planning and scheduling, but disruptive event management is still a problem to be solved. Since a disruptive event can affect the overall performance of the supply chain, SCEM (Supply Chain Event Management) systems presenting different automation levels such as monitoring, alarm and decision support have been proposed. However, the management of disruptive events, taking into account the distributed nature of the supply chain, the members' autonomy and the ability to exert corrective control actions, has been identified as a problem that requires further research. This work presents an agent-based approach for the SCEM problem, which can perform autonomous corrective control actions to minimize the effect of deviations in the plan that is currently being executed. These control actions consist of a distribution of the variation between supply chain members, using the plan's slack in a collaborative way. An innovative feature of this approach is its focus on resources, which are affected by disruptive events in a direct way. Based on this approach, a SCEM system is designed as a net of control points defined on resources connected through supply process orders. Two novel aspects are the distributed collaborative inter-organizational architecture of the SCEM system and a Double Contract Net Protocol. This protocol allows a set of resource:representing agents to interact through an agent, representing a supply process order as a mediator. An application to a case study of the Multi-Agent SCEM system implemented with JADE is provided.     

Agents’ incentives under buy-back contracts in a two-stage supply chain

This paper investigates how the behavior of individual decision makers can affect the performance of a supply chain. We study a two-stage supplier–retailer system, using a buy-back contract. Each firm's actions are executed by an agent. The retailer's purchasing agent and the supplier's sales agent are compensated based on certain performance measures, and they act accordingly. We study the impacts of their behavior in both the supplier-as-leader and retailer-as-leader settings. We find that, unless their incentives are carefully constructed, the agents can strongly distort the system's behavior. Specifically, “channel stuffing” (packing the distribution channel with excess inventory) can occur in both settings. Only when the agents are compensated based on net profit do they act in accord with their firms’ objectives. These results may help explain some recent scandals.     

The impact of trust on innovativeness and supply chain performance

Trust is identified as a significant predictor of positive performance in business relationships. On the premise that the effects of trust have not been given the deserved scholarly attention in the supply chain context, this paper investigates the effects of trust on innovativeness and supply chain performance. The hypothesised model is operationalised with survey data and analysed using structural equation modelling. The findings add credence to the positive effects of trust and identify trust and innovativeness as antecedents to higher performance in the supply chain.     

Short-term financing in a cash-constrained supply chain

In this paper we consider a two-level supply chain with a single retailer and a manufacturer, where both the firms are facing financial constraints and can not produce/order their optimal quantity. Our work shows that a lender who finances the manufacturer has a motivation to finance the retailer as well. Motivated by this, we investigate lender's problem of financing both the firms by making a joint decision on the loan amount and comparing it with the case when lender makes independent decision on loan amount for both the firms. Our numerical study indicates that if one of the firms in the supply chain has sufficiently low cash, joint decision (we refer to it as supply chain financing) may be better not only for the lender but for the retailer and manufacturer as well.     

Decision models in global supply chain management

Integrative decision making is key to effective supply chain management (SCM). This article examines five illustrative supply chain decision models that demonstrate the importance of integrating the decisions across the supply chain. The models that are discussed illustrate the diversity of analytical approaches and their usefulness in managing global supply chain issues. The paper identifies potential areas of additional research where analytical modeling can generate useful insights. The paper also presents a short categorization of decision models from literature.     

The analysis of bullwhip effect in a HMMS-type supply chain

The aim of the paper is to investigate the well-known bullwhip effect of supply chains. Control theoretic analysis of bullwhip effect is extensively analyzed in the literature with the Laplace transform. This paper tries to examine the effect for an extended Holt-Modigliani-Muth-Simon model. A two-stage supply chain (supplier-manufacturer) is studied with quadratic costs functional. It is assumed that both firms minimize the relevant costs. The order of the manufacturer is delayed with a known constant. Two cases are examined: supplier and manufacturer minimize the relevant costs decentralized, and a centralized decision rule. The question is answered, how to decrease the bullwhip effect.     

建筑企业供应链管理中的不确定性研究

对建筑企业供应链管理中的不确定性因素进行了详细的剖析，分析了它们对建筑企业供应链管理的影响，并深入探讨了降低建筑企业供应链管理中不确定性影响的措施。     

Agility index in the supply chain

To achieve a competitive edge in the rapidly changing business environment, companies must align with suppliers and customers to streamline operations, as well as working together to achieve a level of agility beyond individual companies. Consequently, agile supply chains are the dominant competitive vehicles. Embracing agile supply chain requires asking some important questions, namely: what exactly is agility and how can it be measured? Moreover, how can agility be effectively achieved and enhanced? Due to the ambiguity of agility assessment, most measures are described subjectively using linguistic terms. Thus, this study develops a fuzzy agility index (FAI) based on agility providers using fuzzy logic. The FAI comprises attribute’ ratings and corresponding weights, and is aggregated by a fuzzy weighted average. To illustrate the efficacy of the method, this study also evaluates the supply chain agility of a Taiwanese company. This evaluation demonstrates that the method can provide analysts with more informative and reliable information for decision.     

The intersection of strategic management and supply chain management

Strategic management and supply chain management (SCM) have overlapping interests, yet there has been little exchange between them. We examine areas of overlap and suggest how insights from each field can complement and support the other. Specifically, several of strategic management's theories and its emphasis on explaining firm profits should be useful to SCM. SCM offers to strategic management a new level of analysis and possibly a new type of organization. Overall, we argue that increased interaction between these important areas will benefit knowledge development in both and thereby enhance organizations' ability to meet their goals.