Competing with channel partners: Supply chain conflict when retailers introduce store brands

Private‐label products are of increasing importance in many retail categories. While national‐brand products are designed by the manufacturer and sold by the retailer, the positioning of store‐brand products is under the complete control of the retailer. We consider a scenario where products differ on a performance quality dimension and we analyze how retailer–manufacturer interactions in product positioning are affected by the introduction of a private‐label product. Specifically, we consider a national‐brand manufacturer who determines the quality of its product as well the product's wholesale price charged to the retailer. Given the national‐brand quality and wholesale price, the retailer then decides the quality level of its store brand and sets the retail prices for both products. We find that a manufacturer can derive substantial benefits from considering a retailer's store‐brand introduction when determining the national brand's quality and wholesale price. If the retailer has a significant cost disadvantage in producing high‐quality products, the manufacturer does not need to adjust the quality of the national‐brand product, but he should offer a wholesale price discount to ensure its distribution through the retailer. If the retailer is competitive in providing products of high‐quality, the manufacturer should reduce this wholesale price discount and increase the national‐brand quality to mitigate competition. Interestingly, we find the retailer has incentive to announce a store‐brand introduction to induce the manufacturer's consideration of these plans in determining the national‐brand product quality and wholesale price. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

Stochastic production capacity: A bane or a boon for quick response supply chains?

The quick response (QR) system that can cope with demand volatility by shortening lead time has been well studied in the literature. Much of the existing literature assumes implicitly or explicitly that the manufacturers under QR can always meet the demand because the production capacity is always sufficient. However, when the order comes with a short lead time under QR, availability of the manufacturer's production capacity is not guaranteed. This motivates us to explore QR in supply chains with stochastic production capacity. Specifically, we study QR in a two-echelon supply chain with Bayesian demand information updating. We consider the situation where the manufacturer's production capacity under QR is uncertain. We first explore how stochastic production capacity affects supply chain decisions and QR implementation. We then incorporate the manufacturer's ability to expand capacity into the model. We explore how the manufacturer determines the optimal capacity expansion decision, and the value of such an ability to the supply chain and its agents. Finally, we extend the model to the two-stage two-ordering case and derive the optimal ordering policy by dynamic programming. We compare the single-ordering and two-ordering cases to generate additional managerial insights about how ordering flexibility affects QR when production capacity is stochastic. We also explore the transparent supply chain and find that our main results still hold.     

模拟体系对抗价值链的网络同步模型

描述战斗毁伤"规模效应"的Lanchester模型默认作战体系内部是"完美的"。本文扬弃此假设,首次从作战体系内部"共识"涌现的视角提出了一个模拟体系对抗价值链的网络"同步效应"模型,研究了战场变化、个体/群体认知、自同步与对抗均衡等概念的网络拓扑和权值演化形式,并发现在对抗均衡条件下无标度网络具有"同步脆弱性"。     

基于风险控制的装备供应链网络设计模型

针对风险管理中的装备供应链正向（供应）网络设计问题，在对装备供应链风险和成本进行量化分析的基础上，综合考虑风险和成本2方面因素，建立了基于风险控制的装备供应链网络设计优化模型。并设计了遗传算法对模型进行求解，给出在指定风险水平下最优设计方案与总成本。最后通过实例分析和计算，结果表明，该优化模型合理、有效、可行。     

Data-driven research in retail operations—A review

We review the operations research/management science literature on data-driven methods in retail operations. This line of work has grown rapidly in recent years, thanks to the availability of high-quality data, improvements in computing hardware, and parallel developments in machine learning methodologies. We survey state-of-the-art studies in three core aspects of retail operations—assortment optimization, order fulfillment, and inventory management. We then conclude the paper by pointing out some interesting future research possibilities for our community.     

关于推进农业产业化经营的思考

推进农业产业化经营的关键是抓务实。这就要求:从科学区分外部拉动型、内部合作型、产业链一体化型三种农业产业化经营基本类型和正确处理土地规模经营与家庭承包经营、发展农业与发展其他产业、政府宏观调控与企业、农户自主经营的关系入手,科学选择农业产业化经营的模式;在正确把握目前我国农业产业化经营在农产品竞争力、市场建设、利益机制、政府行为等方面存在的问题的基础上,采取相应对策。     

Lot streaming with supplier–manufacturer coordination

Lot splitting refers to breaking a production lot into smaller sublots during production. Coordinating lot splitting decisions across multiple stages of a production process is a challenging task. Traditional lot splitting and lot streaming models implicitly assume that the entire system is operated and owned by the same firm, or there exists a coordinator who controls the operation of all machines in the system. In this paper, we consider the situation where the machines in a multiple‐stage production process are owned and managed by different companies. Every item in a given production lot has to go through the processing by the supplier's machine, followed by the manufacturer's machine, and so on. We develop and analyze coordination mechanisms that enable different parties in the supply chain to coordinate their lot splitting decisions so as to achieve a systemwide optimum. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004     

Double Mover–Stayer model on customer switching in telecommunications industry

Customer acquisition and customer retention are the most important challenges in the increasingly competitive telecommunications industry. Traditional studies of customer switching always assume that customers are homogeneous, and thus that model customer switching behavior follows a Markov formulation. However, this postulation is obviously inappropriate in most instances. Blumen et al. (Cornell Studies of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1955) developed the Mover–Stayer (MS) model, a generalization of the Markov chain model, to relax the requirement of homogeneity and allow the presence of heterogeneity with two different types of individuals—“stayers,” who purchase the same kinds of products or services throughout the entire observation period; and “movers,” who look for variety in products or services over time. There are two purpose of this article. First, we extend the MS model to a Double Mover‐Stayer (DMS) model by assuming the existence of three types of individuals in the market: (1) stable and loyal customers, who have stable usage within the same company; (2) instable but loyal customers, whose usage varies within the same company over time; and (3) disloyal customers, who switch from one company to another to seek for new experiences or/and benefits. We also propose an estimation method for the DMS model. Second, we apply the DMS model to telecommunications data and demonstrate how it can be used for pattern identification, hidden knowledge discovery, and decision making. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012     

Inventory pooling games for expensive,low‐demand spare parts

We consider several independent decision makers who stock expensive, low‐demand spare parts for their high‐tech machines. They can collaborate by full pooling of their inventories via free transshipments. We examine the stability of such pooling arrangements, and we address the issue of fairly distributing the collective holding and downtime costs over the participants, by applying concepts from cooperative game theory. We consider two settings: one where each party maintains a predetermined stocking level and one where base stock levels are optimized. For the setting with fixed stocking levels, we unravel the possibly conflicting effects of implementing a full pooling arrangement and study these effects separately to establish intuitive conditions for existence of a stable cost allocation. For the setting with optimized stocking levels, we provide a simple proportional rule that accomplishes a population monotonic allocation scheme if downtime costs are symmetric among participants. Although our whole analysis is motivated by spare parts applications, all results are also applicable to other pooled resource systems of which the steady‐state behavior is equivalent to that of an Erlang loss system. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012     

基于证据理论的战时军械维修器材供应链性能评价

在一般供应链性能评价指标体系的基础上,结合现代战争中军械维修器材供应链的特点,从资源、输出和柔性三个角度构建了战时军械维修器材供应链性能评价的指标体系.考虑到战争环境下信息的模糊性和不确定性,建立了战时军械维修器材供应链性能评价的证据理论模型.以某战时军械维修器材供应链为例,基于构建的战时军械维修器材供应链性能评价指标体系和模型进行案例研究.结果表明,基于证据理论构建的战时军械维修器材供应链性能评价模型是可行的,有效的.