Comparative Studies of Three Backup Contracts Under Supply Disruptions

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (02) ◽  
pp. 1550006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Hou ◽  
Xiangpei Hu

We focus our research on a supply chain involving one buyer and two independent suppliers of the same product. The main supplier is prone to supply disruption and recurrent supply uncertainty, and the backup supplier is perfectly reliable but supply goods at higher prices. Three kinds of backup contracts between the buyer and the backup supplier are investigated to mitigate supply risks: A capacity reservation contract, a make-to-order contract, and a buy-back contract. Models are developed to study how the buyer's expected profit and optimal decisions related to each contract change with the supply risks. We also examine the sensitivity of various cost parameters on the optimal decisions, and compare the values of three backup contracts for the buyer. Furthermore, we present how these results differ from those obtained in the analysis with demand uncertainty considered. Our study provides managerial insights into the positive effects of different backup contracts on the buyer's expected profit in the events of unexpected disruption.

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-620
Author(s):  
Jie Gao ◽  
Zhilei Liang ◽  
Jennifer Shang ◽  
Zeshui Xu

We study a dual-channel recycling closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) and investigate the royalty strategy involving cost-reducing technique for remanufacturing patented products. Facing information asymmetry and market uncertainty, we address the problem where the patent licensor (manufacturer) and licensee (remanufacturer) simultaneously compete in the sales market and the recycling market. We examine the optimal decisions of a decentralized CLSC (D-CLSC) with the manufacturer being the Stackelberg leader. Numerical examples are used to demonstrate how the patented technology (cost-reducing technique) affects the channel players’ behaviors and how to identify the optimal royalty fee. Based on the theoretical derivation and the numerical outcomes, we find that regardless of the CLSC structure (centralized or decentralized), the take-back prices and the total profits will rise with the increase of savings from the licensed technology. In the D-CLSC, (i) the expected profits of the manufacturer and the remanufacturer as well as the royalty fee will also rise with the savings from the licensed technology. (ii) In addition, the wholesale price, retail price, take-back prices, as well as the royalty fee will rise with the degree of information asymmetry. But the retailer’s expected profit will decline. (iii) Finally, the expected profit of the manufacturer will rise with the demand uncertainty and the return uncertainty. For the remanufacturer, this trend is not obvious. Our research provides guidance to resolve conflicts and intellectual property disputes between the original manufacturer and the remanufacturer of the patented product.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Chongfeng Lan ◽  
Jianfeng Zhu

New product presale is a strategic behavior of manufacturers to transfer inventory risks to consumers. The research purpose of this paper is to examine the presale discount, inventory, and service level decisions in an e-commerce supply chain, where the first period is the presale period and the second is the selling period for the new product. First, consumers were divided into two types—those who are risk averse and those who are not. Then, considering different presale discounts applied for new products, three presale strategy models were discussed: no-presale strategy, presale strategy with a moderate discount, and complete presale strategy, and the optimal decisions of e-commerce supply chain members were obtained under different valuations of the new product by consumers. Finally, the effects of the correlation coefficient between the numbers of the two types of consumers, the loss aversion degree of consumers, and the marginal profit in the sales period on the optimal discounted price and the maximum expected profit were analyzed. The conclusions of this article show that the presale strategy is not always optimal but depends on the parameters of the market and the type of consumers. For example, when the correlation coefficient between the two types of consumers is high, it is more profitable for the suppliers if they choose the presale strategy with a moderate discount, while e-commerce platforms tend to adopt the no-presale strategy. The optimal discounted price in the complete presale case is not necessarily lower than that in the moderately discounted presale case. If the marginal profit is high in the normal sales period or consumers are less averse to losses, suppliers are more likely to adopt the complete presale strategy. The research conclusions provide some theoretical reference for companies in the development of new product presale strategies in the e-commerce supply chain.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tingting Wang ◽  
Chuiri Zhou

Purpose This paper aims to study a retailer’s decision on the price and inventory when facing strategic consumer behavior and demand uncertainty. Price protection is a kind of rebate that the retailer provides to consumers when the price drops during the selling season. The research investigates whether price protection can bring the retailer advantages. This paper compares price protection’s impact with price commitment. In addition, the paper studies the price protection’s impacts on supplier of the supply chain. Design/methodology/approach In this model, there are three alternative strategies for retailer: no price protection policy, full price protection policy and partial price protection policy. The selling season is divided into two periods: regular period and sale period. In the regular period, the products are sold at a regular price. In the sale one, the products are sold at a lower price. By adopting rational expectations equilibrium, this paper analyzes retailer’s optimal price and order quantity under each policy and compares optimal decisions and maximum profits of three policies. Findings This paper finds that the price protection has a positive influence on the retailer. Strategic consumers are induced to purchase at the regular period. It can simultaneously increase retailer’s profit and reduce inventory risk. Meantime, full price protection is chosen as the optimal policy. By comparing full price protection’s impacts with price commitment, full price protection is considered as the most profitable strategy, while price commitment can bring lower inventory risk. In addition, the profit of supplier would decrease because of price protection. Originality/value This research provides a new method to address the negative effects of strategic consumer behavior. It also brings some managerial insights to some retailers, especially online ones, on whether to adopt price protection.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (02) ◽  
pp. 1840008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunlin Luo ◽  
Xin Tian ◽  
Xiaobing Mao ◽  
Qiang Cai

This paper addresses the operational decisions and coordination of the supply chain in the presence of risk aversion, where the risk averse retailer’s performance is measured by a combination of the expected profit and conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). Such performance measure reflects the desire of the retailer to maximize the expected profit on one hand and to control the downside risk of the profit on the other hand. The impact of risk aversion on the supply chain’s decision and performance is also explored. To overcome the inefficiency due to the double marginalization and the aggravation resulting from risk aversion, we investigate the buy-back contract to coordinate the supply chain. Such contract can largely increase the supply chain’s profit, especially when the retailer is more risk averse. Lastly, we extend such risk measure to the widely-used business model nowadays — platform selling model, and explore the impact of the allocation rule on the manufacturer’s decision.


Author(s):  
Xiaoning Jin ◽  
Lin Li ◽  
Jun Ni

This paper presents an analytical, option-based cost model for an integrated production and preventive maintenance decision making with stochastic demand. The determination of preventive maintenance times and their schedule during a production period is converted to an option problem through maximizing the profit of the production per unit time. The optimal number of preventive maintenance actions is obtained and some further discussions on how the cost parameters affect the optimal results are also derived. The resulting option-based model is found to add flexibility to the production system and thus reduce the risk of shortage when the production system is faced with stochastic demand. A comparisons between the basic model (without option) and the option-based preventive maintenance model has shown that the option model is a more flexible under demand uncertainty and results in at least as much profit as the basic one.


Author(s):  
Akshay Mutha ◽  
Saurabh Bansal ◽  
V. Daniel R. Guide

The modeling-based case study is useful for two purposes: introduce closed-loop supply chains and highlight and model some of its unique aspects that the traditional newsvendor formulation does not capture. The case focuses on a third-party remanufacturer (3PR) who buys used cellphones in different quality grades in anticipation of demand. Phones in high grade have been used gently—they have a high acquisition cost but low remanufacturing cost. Low-grade phones have been used extensively—they are cheaper to acquire but have a higher remanufacturing cost. Medium-grade phones have intermediate acquisition and remanufacturing costs. The 3PR needs to trade off these two costs and determine which grade(s) of used phones to buy. The 3PR restores all phones to the same like-new standard during remanufacturing. Extensive use of the case in supply chain management courses shows that in the absence of a mathematical model, students systematically deviate from the optimal decisions because of contextual features. Overall, students believed the case was challenging and that it provides a valuable learning experience, both as an exposure to the closed-loop supply chain domain as well as developing models with industry-specific factors.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (02) ◽  
pp. 1750001
Author(s):  
Wensi Zhang ◽  
Jinlin Li ◽  
Ran Zhang ◽  
Yahong Chen

This paper investigates the impact of emergency order in a price-dependent newsvendor setting. To this end, we compare two ways handling the excess demand: the excess demand is lost and a penalty cost is incurred, or the excess demand can be satisfied by an emergency order. Which way is better depends on the emergency purchase cost [Formula: see text] in emergency-order way and the price [Formula: see text] plus penalty cost [Formula: see text] in lost-sales way. For a risk-neutral newsvendor, our results indicate that, when [Formula: see text] is not larger than [Formula: see text], the emergency order way can lead to smaller order quantity and higher expected profit. We continue to discuss the impact of newsvendor’s risk aversion and demand uncertainty on the optimal decisions of the two ways. Theoretical analysis and numerical examples indicate that when the emergency purchase cost is not high, the differentials of the optimal order quantities and expected profits will be larger as the degree of risk aversion/demand uncertainty increases. What is more, we prove that there exists a threshold value of the emergency purchase cost so that the two ways handling excess demand can obtain the same expected profit, and this threshold value increases as the degree of risk aversion decreases.


Author(s):  
Kanapath Plangsrisakul ◽  
Tuanjai Somboonwiwat ◽  
Chareonchai Khompatraporn

This research studies a make-to-order production planning in a canned pineapple industry. Pineapple is a seasonal perishable fruit. Thus, the cost of fresh pineapple which is the main raw material in canned pineapple is inexpensive during its season. The color of the pineapple also determines the price of the canned pineapple. However, the availability of different colors (called “choice” and “standard”) is dependent. Specifically, if the ratio of the choice color is more, the ratio of the other color is less. There are several costs involve such as fresh pineapple cost, can cost, sugar cost, water cost, labor cost, energy cost, and inventory cost. The problem is formulated as a mathematical model to maximize the total profit over four-months planning horizon. Two supply uncertainty cases are tested which are low and high ratios of the choice color. The results show that the profit depends on available color ratios of the pineapple. The production planning is best if it matches with the availability of the color ratios. In certain months, some fresh pineapple purchased exceed the need of the production because of the dependency of the two colors. The inventory holding cost also influences the production decision—whether to produce the canned pineapple in earlier months or it is better to produce only the canned pineapple when it is needed to serve the customer orders.


Author(s):  
C. Shi ◽  
B. Chen

Setting performance targets and managing to achieve them is fundamental to business success. As a result, it is common for managers to adopt a satisficing objective—that is, to maximize the probability of achieving some preset target profit level. This is especially true when companies are increasingly engaged in short-term relationships enabled by electronic commerce. In this chapter, our main focus is a decentralized supply chain consisting of a supplier and a retailer, both with the satisficing objective. The supply chain is examined under three types of commonly used contracts: wholesale price, buy back, and quantity flexibility contracts. Because a coordinating contract has to be Pareto optimal regardless of the bargaining powers among the agents, we first identify the Pareto-optimal contract(s) for each contractual form. Second, we identify the contractual forms that are capable of coordination of the supply chain with the satisficing objectives. In contrast to the well-known results for the supply chain with the objectives of expected profit maximization, we show that wholesale price contracts can coordinate the supply chain with the satisficing objectives, whereas buy back contracts cannot. Furthermore, quantity flexibility contracts have to degenerate into wholesale price contracts to coordinate the supply chain. This provides an important justification for the popularity of wholesale price contracts besides their simplicities and lower administration costs. Finally, we discuss possible extensions to the model by considering different types of objectives for different agents.


Author(s):  
Lingxiu Dong ◽  
Xin Geng ◽  
Guang Xiao ◽  
Nan Yang

Problem definition: This paper studies the sourcing of a monopoly firm that procures from multiple unreliable suppliers to meet its deterministic/price-dependent demand. The suppliers’ production processes are unreliable and are modeled by correlated proportional random yields. Academic/practical relevance: As a proactive risk-mitigation tool, supply diversification has been widely studied in the literature, with the primary focus on independent supply risks. However, supply risks in practice may be correlated in nature for various reasons. By accounting for yield correlation among suppliers’ production processes, our work aims to help firms better manage their supply base and fully exploit the benefit of risk pooling through diversification. Methodology: Stochastic optimization serves as our main tool for analysis. Results: We formulate the firm’s problem in a general n-supplier setting and prove its structural properties. For a two-supplier case, we fully characterize the firm’s optimal sourcing decision and provide a unified measurement to quantify how yield correlation and characteristics jointly affect the supply base selection. Specifically, we show that when the two suppliers are highly positively correlated, the firm may sole-source from the supplier with higher effective procurement cost (the procurement cost per expected delivered unit) and also higher reliability. In addition, as the production yields become more positively correlated, supply diversification becomes less likely, and the firm’s profit decreases. Moreover, assuming multivariate normally distributed yields, we generalize those results and relevant insights to the multiple-supplier case. We uncover the critical role played by yield correlation and illustrate the insufficiency of using effective procurement cost alone to qualify a supplier. Finally, we incorporate demand uncertainty to confirm the robustness of our findings. Managerial implications: Our results urge caution in selecting the optimal supply base when the yield risks are correlated. Particularly, yield correlation, effective procurement costs, and supplier reliability should be jointly taken into account; otherwise, ignoring any one of these factors may lead to suboptimal outcomes.


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