供应链中具有产能限制的竞争企业中的信息共享研究

本文研究由一个供货商和两个制造商组成的二级供应链中,制造商之间的横向信息共享策略和供应商的定价问题。在模型中,上游供应商同时为下游两家制造商提供价格相同的原材料,下游制造商生产具有替代性的商品进行数量竞争,并受到相同的产能限制。以Cournot博弈为研究手段,求解了制造商的均衡订货决策和信息共享策略,分析比较了在不同的信息共享策略下制造商的利润、供应商的利润和批发价格。本文在研究制造商的信息共享策略时考虑了上游供应商的批发价格的影响。研究表明,当均衡解受到产能约束时,制造商的信息共享策略会反向。在某些情况下,完全信息共享和完全信息不共享都可能成为博弈的占优策略。上游供应商通过调整批发价格可以影响制造商的信息共享决策。该模型为上游供应商提供了一种最优定价策略,也为下游制造商提供了求解自身最优订货量和信息共享决策的方法。

Information Sharing Strategy among Competitive Companies with Capacity Constraints in a Supply Chain

In supply chains, it is increasingly popular that many companies start to share information with each other in order to gain competitive advantage. It is commonly observed that a significant amount of information is being exchanged between suppliers and manufacturers, between manufacturers and retailers, between retailers and consumers, and also among competitors to improve collaborations. Most supply chains literatures study vertical information in the absence of horizontal information sharing. Some papers investigate horizontal information sharing among competitors in a one-level market, in which interactions between vertical parties is not considered. Therefore, the present study focuses on the effect of horizontal information sharing across buyers on the supplier and how the supplier can affect downstream information sharing strategy using wholesale pricing in the absence of vertical information sharing. In this paper, the effect of bound equilibria of manufacturers on supplier's pricing and horizontal information sharing strategy is investigated by using a two-echelon supply chain comprising one upstream supplier and two downstream manufacturers. In this model, the supplier offers same wholesale price to both manufacturers, and the two manufacturers produce substitutable final products and engage in quantity competition with capacity constraints. By constructing a Cournot competition model, equilibrium order quantity and information sharing strategy for manufacturers are solved and the profit of the manufacturers and the supplier and the wholesale price under different information sharing strategies are analyzed and compared. In numerical study, an algorithm is developed to derive supplier's optimal wholesale price and the effect of capacity constraints on information sharing strategy and profit of supplier and manufacturers is studied by using a Matlab program. The results show that the incentives can be reversed when some equilibrium solutions are binding on capacity and we identify some conditions under which full information sharing or no information sharing is the dominant strategy. Upstream supplier can influence the manufacturer's information sharing strategies by adjusting the wholesale price. Manufacturers' ordering decisions and an algorithm for supplier's optimal pricing decisions under different situations are established in this study.