客户集中度、市场环境与存货管理效率

客户处在供应链的下游,对企业存货的采购、生产和销售都会产生重要影响,而多变的市场环境也在无形当中影响着客户与企业之间的关系。从企业所处行业、地区产品市场和客户三个角度所带来的市场环境变化入手,采用2011—2017年我国沪深两市A股制造业上市公司的数据,实证分析客户集中度与企业存货管理效率之间的关系。研究发现:(1)客户集中度越高,企业存货管理效率越高;(2)产品市场竞争力度越强,客户集中度对企业存货管理效率的影响越大;(3)产品市场发育越好,客户集中度对企业存货管理效率的影响越大。进一步研究发现,当企业因客户生产经营原因导致需求发生较大变化时,客户集中度对企业存货管理效率的正向影响更加显著。研究结论表明,政府应当注重市场竞争力的提升和良好经营环境的建设,使得企业在维护客户关系的同时充分发挥客户集中度对企业存货管理效率的积极作用。     

浅析英国工业革命的市场条件

国内外市场的存在及市场需求的不断增长的压力是英国工业生产发展的主要动因。英国可资利用的市场规模远较欧洲其它国家的市场大,这大大便利了英国工业品的生产与销售。英国市场的性质也有助于工业再生产的进行。     

面向多样化需求的M RO 服务资源配置模型与算法

针对大型复杂企业维修任务集的多服务需求点和多样化需求特征,基于服务需求视角,定义一类多服务需求点下的MRO服务资源配置问题,建立以MRO服务提供商整体服务成本为优化目标,同时考虑资源紧张度、信任度和多服务需求点不同工期要求的问题模型;针对模型中的关键参数（即服务成本和资源紧张度）的特征进行分析,并给出相应的度量方法;在此基础上,设计改进的模拟植物生长算法实现求解,算法通过启发式获得初始可行解,并进行敏感性分析。研究结果表明, MRO服务资源配置模型和算法是可行和有效的,服务成本的波动、信任度和资源紧张度的变化对于资源配置结果均有影响,模型能够有效提高维修服务成本的估算能力,同时能够保持MRO服务提供商资源配置的稳定性。     

非对称成本扰动信息非线性需求函数下的供应链契约设计

为了分析非对称的成本扰动信息对于供应链契约设计的影响,研究了当制造商的成本发生扰动并且扰动信息是非对称的情形下的零售商的最优契约设计问题。假定市场需求是关于价格的非线性函数,使用委托-代理理论,设计了非对称的成本扰动信息下的供应链最优契约菜单,并且分析了非对称的扰动信息对于供应链绩效的影响。研究结果表明,当需求为常数柔性函数或者指数函数形式时,可以设计有效的契约菜单来改善供应链的绩效;在非对称的成本扰动信息下,当生产成本扰动满足一定条件时,初始的生产计划仍然是最优的;非对称的成本扰动信息并不必然会给供应链带来利润损失。最后通过数值算例对模型的结果进行了验证。     

Clickstream Data and Inventory Management: Model and Empirical Analysis

We consider firms that feature their products on the Internet but take orders offline. Click and order data are disjoint on such non‐transactional websites, and their matching is error‐prone. Yet, their time separation may allow the firm to react and improve its tactical planning. We introduce a dynamic decision support model that augments the classic inventory planning model with additional clickstream state variables. Using a novel data set of matched online clickstream and offline purchasing data, we identify statistically significant clickstream variables and empirically investigate the value of clickstream tracking on non‐transactional websites to improve inventory management. We show that the noisy clickstream data is statistically significant to predict the propensity, amount, and timing of offline orders. A counterfactual analysis shows that using the demand information extracted from the clickstream data can reduce the inventory holding and backordering cost by 3% to 5% in our data set.     

The Design and Introduction of Product Lines When Consumer Valuations are Uncertain

This article presents a model of the design and introduction of a product line when the firm is uncertain about consumer valuations for the products. We find that product line introduction strategy depends on this uncertainty. Specifically, under low levels of uncertainty the firm introduces both models during the first period; under higher levels of uncertainty, the firm prefers sequential introduction and delays design of the second product until the second period. Under intermediate levels of uncertainty the firm's first product should be of lower quality than one produced by a myopic firm that does not take product line effects into consideration. We find that when the firm introduces a product sequentially, the strategy might depend on realized demand. For example, if realized demand is high, the firm's second product should be a higher‐end model; if demand turns out to be low, the firm's second product should be a lower‐end model or replace the first product with a lower‐end model.     

Optimal Inventory Control with Retail Pre‐Packs

A pre‐pack is a collection of items used in retail distribution. By grouping multiple units of one or more stock keeping units (SKU), distribution and handling costs can be reduced; however, ordering flexibility at the retail outlet is limited. This paper studies an inventory system at a retail level where both pre‐packs and individual items (at additional handling cost) can be ordered. For a single‐SKU, single‐period problem, we show that the optimal policy is to order into a “band” with as few individual units as possible. For the multi‐period problem with modular demand, the band policy is still optimal, and the steady‐state distribution of the target inventory position possesses a semi‐uniform structure, which greatly facilitates the computation of optimal policies and approximations under general demand. For the multi‐SKU case, the optimal policy has a generalized band structure. Our numerical results show that pre‐pack use is beneficial when facing stable and complementary demands, and substantial handling savings at the distribution center. The cost premium of using simple policies, such as strict base‐stock and batch‐ordering (pre‐packs only), can be substantial for medium parameter ranges.     

Managing Demand Risk in Tactical Supply Chain Planning for a Global Consumer Electronics Company

We consider the problem of managing demand risk in tactical supply chain planning for a particular global consumer electronics company. The company follows a deterministic replenishment‐and‐planning process despite considerable demand uncertainty. As a possible way to formally address uncertainty, we provide two risk measures, “demand‐at‐risk” (DaR) and “inventory‐at‐risk” (IaR) and two linear programming models to help manage demand uncertainty. The first model is deterministic and can be used to allocate the replenishment schedule from the plants among the customers as per the existing process. The other model is stochastic and can be used to determine the “ideal” replenishment request from the plants under demand uncertainty. The gap between the output of the two models as regards requested replenishment and the values of the risk measures can be used by the company to reallocate capacity among different products and to thus manage demand/inventory risk.     

Demand and Production Management with Uniform Guaranteed Lead Time

Recently, innovation‐oriented firms have been competing along dimensions other than price, lead time being one such dimension. Increasingly, customers are favoring lead time guarantees as a means to hedge supply chain risks. For a make‐to‐order environment, we explicitly model the impact of a lead time guarantee on customer demands and production planning. We study how a firm can integrate demand and production decisions to optimize expected profits by quoting a uniform guaranteed maximum lead time to all customers. Our analysis highlights the increasing importance of lead time for customers, as well as the tradeoffs in achieving a proper balance between revenue and cost drivers associated with lead‐time guarantees. We show that the optimal lead time has a closed‐form solution with a newsvendor‐like structure. We prove comparative statics results for the change in optimal lead time with changes in capacity and cost parameters and illustrate the insights using numerical experimentation.