SCOR template—A simulation based dynamic supply chain analysis tool

The supply chain operations reference model model (SCOR) is developed and maintained by the Supply Chain Council (SCC). The SCOR model is a reference model that can be used to map, benchmark, and improve supply chain operations. SCOR template is a simulation based analysis tool, developed to capture the dynamics of supply chain operations. The first version of the SCOR template was presented in a previous article by Persson and Araldi (2009). Since the finalisation of the first article concerning the SCOR template, a second version of the SCOR template has been constructed and tested in at a case company; Alfa Laval at Ronneby, Sweden—a manufacturer of heat exchangers. Version 2 of the SCOR template is more complete than the previous version. More metrics were introduced and the return processes included. Emphasis has been on making supply chain analysis simple with the introduction of a new building block—the metric module. The case study at Alfa Laval has been based on data from a value stream mapping (VSM) and aimed at comparing different scenarios in the production networks for one specific product. The results of the comparison are one of the pieces of data that the company managers will use when deciding where to allocate production resources in the international production network.     

Strategic marketing in global supply chains: Four challenges

Supply chain management has emerged as a critical arena in which firms can find significant cost reduction opportunities, giving them a cost advantage over competitors. When supply chain management orientations are adopted by several firms in a supply chain, together they can significantly reduce supply chain costs pitting supply chain against supply chain. However, the pursuit of cost savings opportunities is not the only objective of supply chain management. Superior supply chain management can facilitate marketing strategy and lead to the creation of superior customer value, satisfaction, and loyalty, which in turn lead to improved product profit margins, overall firm profitability, and overall corporate growth. However, marketing strategy is problematic in global supply chains. Specifically, four significant strategic marketing challenges exist that relate to the development and execution of marketing strategy in global supply chains. This article draws attention to these challenges to stimulate managerial and research efforts that will move marketing strategy through the 21st century.     

Supply chain cost management and value-based pricing

Continued deflationary trends in many markets around the world are creating greater pressure for cost reduction in order that margins can be maintained. Customers and consumers are increasingly value driven and consequently less brand or supplier loyal. In this challenging world, there is a growing recognition that creative pricing strategies combined with effective supply chain management provide opportunities for significant cost reduction and increased profits. This paper presents evidence to support this viewpoint and suggests an approach to supply chain alignment that can enable cost reduction opportunities to be identified and higher profits to be achieved through collaborative strategies.     

Pricing issues in industrial marketing

Developing an effective pricing strategy today is becoming a difficult task for industrial marketing managers. The failure of firms to totally understand the implications of their pricing decisions often leads to missed opportunities and eventually lowers profits. Price setting and implementation are multidimensional processes affecting customers, products, cost recovery efforts, produce margin levels, customer retention, market share, and domestic and international sales. This issue of Industrial Marketing Management provides some insights into the complexities of this process for managers by examining pricing on several levels, including the organizational influences on industrial pricing, the factors affecting international pricing, the importance of pricing in controlling supply chain costs, the influence of information on pricing decisions, the degree to which the Internet and reverse auctions are affecting customer relationships with their suppliers, and the importance of developing a strategic pricing plan.     

Aligning the sustainable supply chain to green marketing needs: A case study

The research explores the challenges facing organisations in aligning sustainable procurement requirements and marketing needs and the attendant shifts in supply chain management practices. Whilst external influences are readily understood (e.g. regulation and customer demand), less is understood about the implications for suppliers trying to meet sustainable procurement requirements and the organisational challenges of aligning marketing with sustainable supply chain management. An exploratory case study of a UK University catering department has been undertaken, to explore the strategies, processes and relationships associated with synthesising sustainable supply chain and green marketing needs. The empirical findings illustrate the divergence between organisational perspectives on sustainability and procuring sustainable products with marketing demands. Thus, the findings extend the theoretical discussion on sustainable supply chains by providing empirical data based on real-life implementation and from this an emergent aligned supply chain model is proposed, which confirms two drivers for alignment, ‘lean and resource efficient’ and ‘local and seasonal’ — contingent on market demand. The findings emphasise the benefits of a reverse information flow, the importance of intermediaries, and relationships in its fulfilment, while indicating the resurgence of a supply ‘push’ of sustainable products into core markets. Future research directions are also posited.     

Market orientation and quasi-integration: Adding value through relationships

This study explores and describes the rationales and approaches of a market orientated supply chain — labeled the “demand chain”. The objective is to develop theory by providing grounded insights into how and why managers design and implement a market orientated supply chain. Analysis of twenty field interviews uncovered three main rationales for demand chain configuration. Further, a continuum of integration typologies is presented and three key responses explored and described. These findings are discussed and implications for theory and practice are offered.     

分散决策下的双渠道供应链补偿策略——基于消费者渠道选择行为

为了有效解决由于对消费者的争夺从而引发的渠道之间关于定价、服务水平、利润等方面的冲突,基于消费者渠道选择行为,构建了网络直销市场与传统零售市场需求模型和双渠道供应链利润模型,运用Stackelberg模型,在制造商与零售商实施分决策时,通过制造商对零售商实施补偿激励前后的对比,分析了消费者渠道选择行为对网络直销渠道和传统零售渠道定价、制造商与零售商利润以及供应链总利润的影响,并求得最优定价及制造商的最优补偿额度和零售商的最优销售努力水平,进行了不同情况下的双渠道供应链利润的比较分析。结果表明,无论制造商是否实施补偿激励,都应随着网络消费者比例的增加而增加其网络直销价格;零售商的零售渠道价格应根据网络消费者比例的增加先降低到一定水平后再提升。当更多的消费者选择网络直销渠道时,制造商的补偿激励水平和零售商的销售努力程度均会下降。制造商应提高其补偿水平,进而激发零售商提高销售的努力水平,并使双方利润及供应链总利润最大化。研究结果为基于消费者选择行为的供应链补偿研究提供了新方法,对双渠道的供应链补偿研究有借鉴意义。     

Dynamic supply chain modeling using a new fuzzy hybrid negotiation mechanism

The key part of dynamic supply chain management is negotiating with suppliers and with buyers. Coordination is essential for successful supply chain management. In order to model coordination among suppliers and buyers in a dynamic supply chain, this paper takes a step further and proposes a new fuzzy- logic-based hybrid negotiation mechanism. In most real-world negotiation situations, agents have a common interest to cooperate, but have conflicting interests over exactly how to cooperate. These situations involve restrictions and preferences that may be vaguely and partly defined. Therefore, this study takes the advantage of fuzzy logic and develops a hybrid negotiation-based mechanism, that combines both cooperative and competitive negotiations. Achieving effective coordination in a multi-agent system is non-trivial as no agent possesses the global view of the problem space. Moreover, the different strategies adopted by agents may produce conflicts. While agents coordinate with each other in the operations, they will negotiate about their strategies to reduce conflicts. The proposed fuzzy hybrid negotiation mechanism allows negotiation agents more flexibility and robustness in an automated negotiation system. The proposed mechanism not only helps sellers and buyers to explore various new choices and opportunities that the e-markets offer but also allows them to identify and analyze their resource constraints in a given schedule, and helps them to explore and exploit many alternatives for a better solution. The efficacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated through an illustrative example.     

Power to all our friends? Living with imbalance in supplier-retailer relationships

This study investigates the issue of power in business-to-business relationships and constitutes an appraisal of the theory relating to issues of supply chain relationships, in which the received view from the Relationship Marketing (RM) literature with its emphasis on trust, dyadic symmetry and mutuality is questioned. It is contended, alternatively that other types of relationships, for example, those based on selfishness are equally relevant, and that power imbalanced business relationships are just as important to the understanding of business exchange. Specific reference is made to power relationships in vertical food supply channels in the UK, where the majority of control lies in the hands of large multiple retailers. The paper cites case material drawn from studies into the relationships between UK based fresh food supplier organizations and their principal customers, the leading UK food retailers, and determines specific outcomes with regard to issues of power, mutuality and the nature of power-dependent relationships.     

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.     

Optimal pricing and order policies with B2B product returns for fashion products

We study optimal pricing and order policies in supply chain management of fashion products (e.g., a fashion apparel category) with consideration of product returns between supply chain partners (B2B). In order to study channel performance and optimal policies, two stochastic models for centralized channel and decentralized channel are, respectively, developed to handle new fashion and off-season product sales. In the centralized channel, closed-form solutions for optimal order and pricing decisions are proposed for new fashion products. Further, in a decentralized channel, the Stackelberg game model is proposed to derive the optimal Stackelberg equilibrium solution, and then a buy-back contract is designed to coordinate the channel. We also perform parameter analysis on performance of the two channel models. Numerical analysis is finally presented to validate our theoretical results and compare channel performances.     

Setting operating policies for supply hubs

This paper deals with the joint management of operations at the supply hub for the customer and the upstream supplier. Different operating conditions are considered, namely, backordering, minimum and maximum specified inventory levels. Some analytical insights on better managing suppliers operating under a vendor managed inventory program are presented. Essentially, we show that the penalty cost imposed on over- and under-stocking, and the min–max policy for hub inventory reside in the power of the hub operator. The relationship between supply hub policy and performance measures is quite complex and non-linear in nature. We suggest a structured hierarchical approach which can help supply hub in achieving balance between various parties involved in chain. A numerical example and an algorithm are included to highlight this result.     

Multi-objective ant colony optimisation: A meta-heuristic approach to supply chain design

This paper proposes a new approach to determining the Supply Chain (SC) design for a family of products comprising complex hierarchies of subassemblies and components. For a supply chain, there may be multiple suppliers that could supply the same components as well as optional manufacturing plants that could assemble the subassemblies and the products. Each of these options is differentiated by a lead-time and cost. Given all the possible options, the supply chain design problem is to select the options that minimise the total supply chain cost while keeping the total lead-times within required delivery due dates. This work proposes an algorithm based on Pareto Ant Colony Optimisation as an effective meta-heuristic method for solving multi-objective supply chain design problems. An experimental example and a number of variations of the example are used to test the algorithm and the results reported using a number of comparative metrics. Parameters affecting the performance of the algorithm are investigated.     

Supply chain integration and performance: The effects of long-term relationships, information technology and sharing, and logistics integration

Supply chain integration is widely considered by both practitioners and researchers a vital contributor to supply chain performance. The two key flows in such relationships are material and information. Previous studies have addressed information integration and material (logistics) integration in separate studies. In this paper, we investigate the integrations of both information and material flows between supply chain partners and their effect on operational performance. Specifically, we examine the role of long-term supplier relationship as the driver of the integration. Using data from 232 Australian firms, we find that logistics integration has a significant effect on operations performance. Information technology capabilities and information sharing both have significant effects on logistics integration. Furthermore, long-term supplier relationships have both direct and indirect significant effects on performance; the indirect effect via the effect on information integration and logistics integration.     

Applying activity-based costing in a supply chain environment

Traditional intra-firm cost accounting tools are not appropriate in the context of supply chain management, as there are no standards for the definition and composition of costs. This prohibits exchange and comparison of cost data among different supply chain members. Against this background, several activity-based costing models for inter-firm cost accounting have been proposed. Evaluating these models, a conceptual framework for activity-based costing in a supply chain has been developed. This also forms the basis for a single case study conducted at Europe's largest company for façade components. This demonstrates how significant inter-firm cost saving opportunities can be identified and offers a first step in assessing the suitability of the proposed model.     

利他行为下基于差别定价的闭环供应链均衡分析

文章构建一个由制造商和零售商组成的闭环供应链，对新产品和再造品实行差别定价，同时将利他行为引入到该供应链模型中，研究决策者的利他行为对供应链的影响。研究发现，与利他中性相比，制造商的利他行为虽然会削弱自身利润水平，但会使得零售商和整个供应链的利润增加；零售商的利他行为不会改变整个供应链的总利润，制造商增加的利润等于零售商减少的部分；双方同时具有利他行为时会增加供应链总利润，但双方的利他系数组合必须在一定的范围内才能实现双赢。最后通过数值分析对上述结论作出解释和说明。     

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.     

Supply chain risk management in financial crises—A multiple case-study approach

Supply Chain Risk Management has become a key concern for organizations, which is even further emphasized by the current economic and financial crisis. Against this background, this paper investigates successful approaches and experiences by companies in dealing with this new reality, especially as it concerns the supply side. Using in-depth case studies conducted among eight European enterprises, we develop a set of propositions about how companies manage supply risks in financial crises, highlight how their risk management approaches have shifted, and illustrate how they are related to Enterprise Risk Management. Our framework is further differentiated based on whether firms are predominantly engaged in manufacturing or services—a factor influencing how supply chain risk is managed. Transaction cost economics serves as our main theoretical anchor. By rigorously grounding our research in both theory and empirical evidence, we provide valuable insight for both academia and practice.     

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.