Impact of reseller's and sales agent's forecasting accuracy in a multilayer supply chain

We consider a three‐layer supply chain with a manufacturer, a reseller, and a sales agent. The demand is stochastically determined by the random market condition and the sales agent's private effort level. Although the manufacturer is uninformed about the market condition, the reseller and the sales agent conduct demand forecasting and generate private demand signals. Under this framework with two levels of adverse selection intertwined with moral hazard, we study the impact of the reseller's and the sales agent's forecasting accuracy on the profitability of each member. We show that the manufacturer's profitability is convex on the reseller's forecasting accuracy. From the manufacturer's perspective, typically improving the reseller's accuracy is detrimental when the accuracy is low but is beneficial when it is high. We identify the concrete interrelation among the manufacturer‐optimal reseller's accuracy, the volatility of the market condition, and the sales agent's accuracy. Finally, the manufacturer's interest may be aligned with the reseller's when only the reseller can choose her accuracy; this alignment is never possible when both downstream players have the discretion to choose their accuracy. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 207–222, 2014     

Return policy: Hassle‐free or your money‐back guarantee?

This article compares the profitability of two pervasively adopted return policies—money‐back guarantee and hassle‐free policies. In our model, a seller sells to consumers with heterogeneous valuations and hassle costs. Products are subject to quality risk, and product misfit can only be observed post‐purchase. While the hassle‐free policy is cost advantageous from the seller's viewpoint, a money‐back guarantee allows the seller to fine‐tune the consumer hassle on returning the product. Thus, when the two return policies lead to the same consumer behaviors, the hassle‐free policy dominates. Conversely, a money‐back guarantee can be more profitable even if on average, high‐valuation consumers experience a lower hassle cost than the low‐valuation ones. The optimal hassle cost can be higher when product quality gets improved; thus, it is not necessarily a perfect proxy or signal of the seller's quality. We further allow the seller to adopt a mixture of these policies, and identify the concrete operating regimes within which these return policies are optimal among more flexible policies. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 403–417, 2014     

Strategic outsourcing under technology spillovers

We study a supply chain in which an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a contract manufacturer (CM) compete in the finished goods market. The OEM can decide whether to outsource the intermediate good, a critical component for producing the finished good, from the CM or make in‐house production. Technology transition improves the CM's production efficiency, and it can take two different forms: a direct technology transfer from the OEM to the CM or technology spillovers through outsourcing from the OEM to the CM. We document the possibility of strategic outsourcing, that is, the CM supplies the intermediate good to the OEM when she is less efficient than the OEM's in‐house production. We find that technology spillovers can strengthen the incentive for strategic outsourcing. Furthermore, compared with direct technology transfers, outsourcing coupled with technology spillovers may generate more technology transition. Outsourcing is a particularly appropriate channel for implicit collusion when the OEM is not very efficient with the production of the intermediate good. Our results suggest that ex post competition on the finished goods can create room for ex ante collaboration and provide some implications on the OEM's outsourcing strategies when facing a competitive CM.© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 501–514, 2014     

The Demand for Turkish Defence Expenditure

Although a number of studies concerning Turkish defence-growth relation have been published in recent years, little attention is given the demand for Turkish defence expenditure. This is an important issue for understanding which variables contribute to the determination of the demand for military expenditure. However, it is difficult to develop a general theory or a standard empirical approach for the determination of the demand military expenditure. This study models and estimates the demand for Turkish defence expenditure for the period 1951-1998 using autoregressive distributed lag approach to cointegration (ARDL) following the methodology outlined in Pesaran and Shin (1999). This procedure can be applied regardless of the stationary properties of the variables in the sample and allows for inferences on long-run estimates, which is not possible under alternative cointegration procedures. The findings suggest that Turkish defence spending is determined by NATO's defence spending, Greece's defence spending and some security considerations.     

分布式环形网络测发控系统故障恢复时间模型

测发控系统是武器系统中的重要组成部分.提出了一种基于分布式冗余协议(DRP)的测发控系统实现设想,避免了主从式网络中风险高度集中在主站的问题.在对DRP分布式环形网络冗余协议故障诊断和恢复机理进行详细分析的基础上,建立DRP故障恢复时间模型,根据该模型和控制系统采样周期的关系,分别进行环形网络化控制系统丢包概率分析.     

一种适于片上路由器的自适应缓冲调整策略

在典型的片上网络路由节点中,来自不同方向的报文被存储在相互独立的缓冲资源中。在网络负载不均衡的情况下,某些方向的报文将很快填满该方向的缓冲,而其他方向仍可能有较多的缓冲资源处于空闲状态,这样就导致了网络中的缓冲资源利用率不高,进而影响片上网络的整体性能。提出了一种自适应的片上缓冲调整策略,能够根据网络负载情况动态调节缓冲结构,有效地提高了缓冲资源的利用率。在90nmCMOS工艺下设计实现了多端口共享缓冲资源的片上网络路由器,实验结果表明,在负载不均衡的网络中,提出的路由器能够带来性能改进及功耗降低;在达到相同性能的情况下,新路由器的面积较典型路由器减少了20.3%,而其缓冲功耗节约了41%左右。     

流体系结构技术发展探讨

以流计算模型为基础的流体系结构,是面向未来的单片上集成超10亿只晶体管和上千ALU时代的新型体系结构,正成为微处理器体系结构研究关注的前沿焦点之一.首先分析流计算的背景;总结现有的具有代表性的流体系结构,并对它们的结构、执行模式、并行性、片上存储使用方式和应用目标等方面进行了比较;然后归纳流程序设计及其环境,讨论当前流编译研究的热点方向;最后探讨流处理器设计的发展趋势.     

T06筒身内孔φ127尺寸局部超差原因的分析

通过测量T06筒身φ127内孔尺寸,发现有10%的尺寸超差。经分析找到了造成筒身内孔尺寸超差的原因,并采取了相应的措施,取得了明显的效果。     

面向I/O优化调度器的磁盘特征提取

外存I/O一直是影响I/O密集型应用系统性能的决定性因素。在系统分析I/O优化调度策略及其对磁盘特征参数的需求的基础上,提出了一组面向I/O优化调度器的磁盘特征抽取方法。这些抽取方法已经被证明是高效的,并且在Traxtents Cello调度器的实现中得到采用。