Impact of Retailers with Knowledge of Supplier's Inventory on Supply Chain Performance

We model a supply chain consisting of a supplier and multiple retailers facing deterministic demand. We denote some retailers as strategic in the sense that given the supplier inventory information, they will implement the optimal stocking policy by incorporating such information. On the other hand, some retailers are denoted as naïve in the sense that they ignore supply information and resort to a simplistic ordering policy. Naïve retailers learn the optimal policy over time and adjust their orders accordingly. We study the dynamics of this game and investigate the impact of such strategic and naïve retailers on the cost, ordering pattern and stocking policies of all parties. We analyze the supply chain under two scenarios: the centralized supply chain where the objective is to minimize the total supply chain cost, and the decentralized supply chain where each self‐interested player minimizes its own cost in a Stackelberg game setting. We fully characterize the optimal policies under both centralized and decentralized scenarios and show that, surprisingly, the supply chain might be better off by virtue of naïve retailers. The result is driven by the fact that strategic and naïve players’ decisions shift the positioning of inventory in the supply chain with its final impact being determined by the relative costs of different retailer‐types. Our results also offer managerial insights into how access to supply information can improve supply chain performance.     

Winning the Export War: British, Japanese and West German Exporters' Strategy Compared

A comparison of pricing policies, price and volume volatility, and investment in distribution, sales and marketing systems across 462 product categories identifies important differences in the strategies of British, Japanese and West German exporters towards the US market. The impact of these strategic choices on the evolution of market share is tested. The results suggest that many British manufacturers' export strategy has been dominated by UK supply and demand considerations. A large proportion of British exports are therefore confined to niches where sensitivity to price fluctuations and ‘stop-start’ supply is low and local distribution support is less important. Products where ‘pull marketing’ dominates are the key exception. Japanese exporters have invested heavily in US distribution and channel support, combined with a policy of stable US prices, aiding long term penetration. West German exporters have built share on technological advantage and direct sales support supplied from Germany to a limited number of customers.     

Industrial applications of cross-impact analysis

The implicit or explicit ceteris paribus assumption usually made in the planning of economic systems (e.g. industries) is acceptable and accepted during periods of regular economic development; in this context, sensitivity analysis around the central projection is often used in order to measure effective elasticities to unexpected small perturbations of the system.In periods of structural change, unpredictable major events greatly reduce the value of any trend projection, and the ceteris paribus assumption has to be replaced by ‘scenarios’ of the future environment.The causal structure which generates these events is unknown; in such a situation, it seems reasonable to rely upon ‘opinions’ in order to assess the a priori probabilities of these events. Cross-impact analysis is one of the methods developed in order to improve human probability judgments of single and pairs of events and in order to deal explicitly with higher order interactions; in particular, cross-impact allows for the computation of the most probable combination of the events considered, or ‘most probable scenario’. In the industrial planning process, this ‘most probable scenario’ can be used as the set of exogeneous conditions for the central projection.     

Characterizing order processes of using inventory policies in supply chains

This study characterizes order processes under (R,nQ) inventory policies. We show first that the order distribution at an installation is stationary when it uses an (R,nQ) control policy, for any arbitrary stationary distribution of customer demand. We then quantify variance amplification and show that variance of orders is never less than the demand variance. Finally, we extend the analysis to the case where the supply chain comprises of one distributor and N retailers serving customers.     

How to design a financial planning model.

Corporate planning models frequently consist of integrated pro forma income statements, statements of financial position, and cashflow statements. When implemented by utilizing computer-based planning systems, these models allow managers to explore potential decisions in ‘what if?’ planning analyses.The logic of an integrated financial statement planning model can be arranged following either a ‘funds needed to balance approach’ or a ‘direct approach’. With a funds needed to balance approach total assets are set equal to total liabilities plus equities to satisfy this fundamental accounting identity. Logic in such models is often difficult to validate. In the direct approach, total assets are calculated independently of total liabilities plus equities providing an extremely strong test for model validation prior to using the model to assess ‘what if’ alternatives.In this paper, the author discusses the logic of integrated financial planning models and their implementation with computer-based planning systems. The funds need to balance approach and the direct approach are described and contrasted to assist corporate planners in evaluating and selecting a method for constructing the logic of corporate planning models.     

A method for exploring the future

This paper describes a method for exploring future policy options. The procedures for choosing the range of options and constructing the future scenarios are described with special emphasis on policy implications. The advantages and limitations of this approach are discussed. The construction of scenarios is illustrated by describing three energy policy options for the U.K. The detailed analysis of these energy options, including their political and resource implications, will be described in a later paper.     

“双积分”政策下汽车制造商竞争定价与减排策略研究

"双积分"政策的实施对汽车制造商的定价决策产生了重要影响。考虑卖方由同时生产燃油车和新能源汽车的制造商1和仅生产新能源汽车的制造商2组成,在消费者低碳偏好和价格竞争影响下分别针对制造商1对燃油车采取和不采取节能减排措施的情况,研究"双积分"政策下汽车制造商的定价策略和减排决策,探讨新能源汽车积分值和积分比例要求对政府和企业决策的作用效果。进一步,通过对不同情形的结果进行分析,得到"双积分"政策的出台、消费者低碳偏好及制造商采取节能减排措施对制造商定价和减排决策带来的变化,并通过算例分析验证了结论。研究结果表明:(1)"双积分"政策可以降低新能源汽车的价格,提高新能源汽车制造商的利润,促进燃油车主动减排。(2)当新能源汽车的需求价格弹性系数和需求交叉价格弹性系数处于较高水平时,政府要制定较高的每台新能源汽车积分值。(3)燃油车的油耗水平存在一个环境属性标准,当油耗水平低于一定值时,随着新能源汽车积分比例要求的不断增大,制造商1选择提高燃油车价格。(4)消费者低碳偏好是提高燃油车减排水平的重要因素,政府可以对减排技术先进的燃油车制造商进行低油耗认证,提高消费者低油耗燃油车需求,激励燃油车制...     

Assessment of fifteen years of urban modeling

The purpose of this paper is, through an ‘ethnographic’ approach, to review where the urban and regional modeling field has been since its inception, regarding analytical inputs to policy analysis, policy development, policy assessment etc. Assessed are: What progress in understanding, explanation, evaluation has there been? Do we know a little or a lot more after 15 years than we did in 1962–1963? More than anything—given our often overly ambitious aspirations, false starts, and imprecise objectives: Can representative members of the urban/regional modeling profession be more helpful to policy makers today than we were in the mid-sixties and early seventies? The paper reviews the phases through which this particular modeling field has achieved its current state of maturity, relative calm, and usefulness, and concludes with a discussion of how we could do even better.     

Some issues in the current debate about energy and natural resources

“Zero-growth policies to restore the planet to long-term physical equilibrium or reliance upon market forces to achieve equilibrium between demand and supply?” This sums up the opposing views in the current debate about resources and the environment. Unfortunately, both viewpoints show a disregard for the social and political implications and the uncertainties surrounding their basic assumptions. This article argues that little reliance can be placed upon the published estimates of world fuel and mineral resources, that the assumption of long-term exponential growth in demand for resources is highly contentious, and that it would be unwise to forego the fruits of economic growth owing to a rather remote possibility that global resource depletion may occur in the distant future. Long-term projections are necessary to illustrate what the future may hold, but Malthusian or any other computer models should not be substituted for policy choices. As far as possible, policies should take account of uncertainty and risk and the problems likely to arise from rising prices of fuels and minerals resources and from the location of the bulk of the known reserves of some resources in a few countries. Not least, the aim should be to pursue paths of economic growth which place lighter demands upon the earth's resources and to open desirable technical options for the future through research and development.     

供应链单向及双向期权柔性契约比较分析

在随机市场需求环境下,对于易逝品供应链合作契约的数量柔性问题,建立了两种不同期权模式的柔性契约模型。通过对模型的求解与分析,得出了不同契约下销售商的订货策略,而且销售商在双向期权契约下比在单向看涨期权契约时的期权购买量要小,初始订货量要大,但总的预期订货量要小。销售商在两种期权契约模式下的总的最优订货量均大于传统订货方式下总的最优订货量。两种期权契约均可以提高销售商总的订货量,但在具体契约参数下,两者在接近供应链最优订货量上存在差异。     

动态通胀目标、货币供应机制与中国经济波动——基于动态随机一般均衡的分析

本文建立了一个包含动态通胀目标的货币政策DSGE模型,运用脉冲响应、方差分解、历史分解和反事实仿真方法研究了生产率冲击、消费需求冲击、通胀目标冲击、货币供给冲击对中国经济波动的影响。研究表明,DSGE模型对于分析中国的宏观经济和货币政策具有一定的适用性,中国的货币供应机制中存在不可观察动态内生通胀目标,并且动态通胀目标对生产率冲击做出正向响应的同时,对消费需求冲击做出负向响应;反事实仿真分析表明,具有动态通胀目标的货币供应机制能够起到稳定通货膨胀的作用。     

Bounds of Relative Regret Limit in p‐Robust Supply Chain Network Design

This research studies the p‐robust supply chain network design with uncertain demand and cost scenarios. The optimal design integrates the supplier selection together with the facility location and capacity problem. We provide a new framework to obtain the relative regret limit, which is critical in the robust supply chain design but is assumed to be a known value in the existing literature. We obtain lower and upper bounds for relative regret limit and obtain a sequence of optimal solutions for series relative regret limits between the upper and lower bounds. An algorithm for p‐robust supply chain network design is provided. A series of numerical examples are designed to find the properties of the bottleneck scenarios. A scenario with low probability and a low optimal objective function value for the scenario has a greater chance of being a bottleneck. To focus only on the influence from the relative regret, we also introduce three separate new objective functions in p‐robust design. The proposed new theories and approaches provide a sequence of options for decision makers to reduce the marketing risks effectively in supply chain network design.     

Avoiding skill shortages in the new technologies

In many countries skill shortages are acting as a constraint on the development of the new technologies, such as information technology (IT), microelectronics and biotechnology. As the lead times to develop skilled people can be 5–10 years, the planning of future education and training provision to meet these needs can be extremely difficult. Drawing on current research in the U.K., this paper identifies the types of key skills needed to develop the new technologies and shows the critical role of higher education in providing the basic supply of skilled manpower. The extent of current shortages is considered as well as the likely direction of future demand. The past linkages between higher education and labour market demand are explored and directions for future policy to alleviate likely future shortages are suggested. The paper concludes that future supply and demand trends need to be monitored and better understood, and employment, education and training policies adjusted accordingly if skill shortages are not to be a recurring problem.     

Forecasting the market demand for waste paper

In a recent article in this journal, Livesey and Barcena supplied an interesting but necessarily superficial analysis of the market for waste paper. Their essential conclusion was that, faced with future shortages, and hence increased prices of wood pulp, the paper and board industry would be forced to rely more heavily on secondary fibre. In turn, they felt that ‘in order to ensure an adequate supply of waste paper, governments may need to exert a greater degree of influence over the market than they do at present’.This paper seeks to provide a more rigorous analysis of the ‘waste paper problem’ in terms of future demand and fluctuations in that demand. It also corrects some misconceptions in the paper by Livesey and Barcena as to the likely sources of future supply and the economics of securing those supplies.     

A decision support system for optimising the order fulfilment process

Many authors have highlighted gaps at the interfaces between supply chains (SCs) and demand chains. Generally, the latter tends primarily to be ‘agile’ by maximising effectiveness and responsiveness while the former tends to be ‘lean’ by maximising efficiency. When, in the SC, disruptions (that lead to stock-out situations) occur after customer orders have been accepted, managers are faced with the problem of maximising customer satisfaction while taking into consideration the conflicting objectives of the supply and demand sides of the order fulfilment process. This article proposes a cross-functional multi-criteria decision-making (advanced available-to-promise) tool that provides different strategic options from which a solution can be chosen. It also proposes a performance measurement system to support the decision-making and improvement process. The results of some experimental tests show that the model enables to make strategic decisions on the degree of flexibility required to achieve the desired level of customer service.     

Replenishment Policies for Multi‐Product Stochastic Inventory Systems with Correlated Demand and Joint‐Replenishment Costs

This study analyzes optimal replenishment policies that minimize expected discounted cost of multi‐product stochastic inventory systems. The distinguishing feature of the multi‐product inventory system that we analyze is the existence of correlated demand and joint‐replenishment costs across multiple products. Our objective is to understand the structure of the optimal policy and use this structure to construct a heuristic method that can solve problems set in real‐world sizes/dimensions. Using an MDP formulation we first compute the optimal policy. The optimal policy can only be computed for problems with a small number of product types due to the curse of dimensionality. Hence, using the insight gained from the optimal policy, we propose a class of policies that captures the impact of demand correlation on the structure of the optimal policy. We call this class (s, c, d, S)‐policies, and also develop an algorithm to compute good policies in this class, for large multi‐product problems. Finally using an exhaustive set of computational examples we show that policies in this class very closely approximate the optimal policy and can outperform policies analyzed in prior literature which assume independent demand. We have also included examples that illustrate performance under the average cost objective.     

The Impact of Product Lifecycle on Capacity Planning of Closed‐Loop Supply Chains with Remanufacturing

Product recovery operations in reverse supply chains face rapidly changing demand due to the increasing number of product offerings with reduced lifecycles. Therefore, capacity planning becomes a strategic issue of major importance for the profitability of closed‐loop supply chains. This work studies a closed‐loop supply chain with remanufacturing and presents dynamic capacity planning policies developed through the methodology of System Dynamics. The key issue of the paper is how the lifecycles and return patterns of various products affect the optimal policies regarding expansion and contraction of collection and remanufacturing capacities. The model can be used to identify effective policies, to conduct various “what‐if” analyses, and to answer questions about the long‐term profitability of reverse supply chains with remanufacturing. The results of numerical examples with quite different lifecycle and return patterns show how the optimal collection expansion/contraction and remanufacturing contraction policies depend on the lifecycle type and the average usage time of the product, while the remanufacturing capacity expansion policy is not significantly affected by these factors. The results also show that the collection and remanufacturing capacity policies are insensitive to the total product demand. The insensitivity of the optimal policies to total demand is a particularly appealing feature of the proposed model, given the difficulty in obtaining accurate demand forecasts.     

Measuring the benefit of changing the value offering in grocery supply chains

New value-adding solutions are needed for grocery supply chains to gain a sustainable competitive advantage in a market environment characterised by increased competition. This paper discusses two case studies that identify how improvements to the value offering brought about enhancements to the performance of the total supply chain. The concept of ‘time benefit analysis’ is applied to measure the impact of the change. These approaches offer novel and unique techniques for performance measurement and value offering analysis in supply chain management.     

EOQ with independent endogenous supply disruptions

We consider an inventory installation, controlled by the periodic review base stock (S, T) policy and facing a fixed-rate deterministic demand which, if unsatisfied, is backordered. The supply process is unreliable, so supply deliveries may fail according to an independent Bernoulli process; we refer to such failures reflecting the supply service quality and being internal to the supply chain, as endogenous disruptions. We seek to jointly determine the two policy variables, so to minimize long-run average cost. While an approximate model for this problem was recently analyzed, we present an exact analysis, valid for two common accounting schemes for inventory cost evaluation: continuous and end-of-cycle costing. After developing a unified (and exact) average cost model for both costing schemes, the cost for each scheme is analyzed. In both cases, the optimal policy variables and cost prevail in closed-form, having an identical structure to those of EOQ (with backorders). In fact, under continuous costing, the optimal solution reduces to EOQ for perfect supply. Analytical properties, demonstrating the impact of deteriorating supply quality on the optimal policy, are established. Moreover, computations reveal the cost impact of deploying heuristics that either ignore supply disruptions or rely on inaccurate costing information.     

Mixed contracts for the newsvendor problem with real options and discrete demand

In this paper we consider the newsvendor model with real options under discrete demand. We consider a mixed contract where the retailer can order a combination of q units subject to the conditions in a classical newsvendor contract and Q real options on the same items. We provide a closed form solution to this mixed contract when the demand is discrete and study some of its properties. In particular we demonstrate that a mixed contract may be superior to a real option contract when a manufacturer has a bound on how much variance she is willing to accept.