Impact of transfer pricing methods for tax purposes on supply chain performance under demand uncertainty

Transfer pricing refers to the pricing of an intermediate product or service within a firm. This product or service is transferred between two divisions of the firm. Thus, transfer pricing is closely related to the allocation of profits in a supply chain. Motivated by the significant impact of transfer pricing methods for tax purposes on operational decisions and the corresponding profits of a supply chain, in this article, we study a decentralized supply chain of a multinational firm consisting of two divisions: a manufacturing division and a retail division. These two divisions are located in different countries under demand uncertainty. The retail division orders an intermediate product from the upstream manufacturing division and sets the retail price under random customer demand. The manufacturing division accepts or rejects the retail division's order. We specifically consider two commonly used transfer pricing methods for tax purposes: the cost‐plus method and the resale‐price method. We compare the supply chain profits under these two methods. Based on the newsvendor framework, our analysis shows that the cost‐plus method tends to allocate a higher percentage of profit to the retail division, whereas the resale‐price method tends to achieve a higher firm‐wide profit. However, as the variability of demand increases, our numerical study suggests that the firm‐wide and divisional profits tend to be higher under the cost‐plus method than they are under the resale‐price method. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

The future of the defence firm: the case of the UK aerospace industry

The focus of this paper is the future of the defence firm within the context of the UK aerospace industry and its supply chain. The analysis considers aerospace markets and the aerospace industry in the UK before assessing the future of the defence/aerospace firm as a case study. The paper concludes that its future in terms of the strategic and important aerospace industry is uncertain. The corporate governance of the defence firm will have to change to reflect the hollowing‐out of the firm as the industry experiences significantly less vertical integration. The emphasis of the future defence/aerospace firm will be on ‘buy’ and not necessarily ‘make’. There will also be fewer independent defence aerospace firms as horizontal integration will occur across air, land and sea platforms as well as civil and defence aerospace firms. Indeed, conglomerate integration may even occur with cost pressures and market forces ensuring that merger activity goes beyond defence and aerospace into wider manufacturing industries and, in some cases, service industries in global markets.     

The defence industry supply chain: Linkage patterns in the south west of england 1

In this paper, new data from the south west of England are used to illustrate that defence dependent firms are likely to purchase more inputs locally than less defence‐dependent firms. The results confirm that the defence industry's supply chain has unusual characterises and that defence industrial restructuring is therefore, likely to produce different outcomes to previous rounds of manufacturing restructuring.     

远海作战装备供应链体系架构

信息化使战争的节奏加快,如何满足快节奏战争对装备的需求,无疑是军事保障领域值得研究的一个问题.供应链思想被引入军事物资保障系统后,已在多个领域发挥了显著的效用.建立装备供应链网络对提升远海作战装备供应能力既有现实意义又是可行的,这是因为：一方面信息化条件下远海作战需要更有效率的装备供应体系,另一方面企业供应链为装备供应链提供了可以借鉴的模式.本文通过对远海作战装备供应链目标和特征的分析,参照企业供应链和美军海上供应链建设的情况,建立了远海作战装备供应链网络,并对供应链流程进行了说明.     

Coping with shortages caused by disruptive events in automobile supply chains

Unpredictable disruptive events significantly increase the difficulty of the management of automobile supply chains. In this paper, we propose an automobile production planning problem with component chips substitution in a finite planning horizon. The shortage of one chip can be compensated by another chip of the same type with a higher-end feature at an additional cost. Therefore, the automobile manufacturer can divert the on-hand inventory of chips to product lines that are more profitable in the event of shortages caused by supply chain disruptions. To cope with this, we propose a max-min robust optimization model that captures the uncertain supplies of chips. We show that the robust model has a mixed-integer programming equivalence that can be solved by a commercial IP solver directly. We compare the max-min robust model with the corresponding deterministic and two-stage stochastic models for the same problem through extensive numerical experiments. The computational results show that the max-min robust model outperforms the other two models in terms of the average and worst-case profits.     

基于Monte Carlo方法的一对二马尔可夫随机格斗模型

讨论了一对二马尔可夫随机格斗双方获胜概率计算问题。提出了一种新颖的一对二马尔可夫随机格斗任意对抗回合双方获胜概率的计算方法,该方法首先基于Monte Carlo仿真计算各个对抗回合中双方发射次序的概率分布,再利用全概率公式确定马尔可夫链的状态转移概率矩阵,从而克服了马尔可夫随机格斗模型往往只能提供无限对抗回合之后格斗双方获胜概率的缺点,为运用马尔可夫随机格斗研究火力运用和弹药分配提供了新途径,并用实例说明了该方法的有效性。     

导弹初始大角度转弯复合控制研究

基于直接力/气动力复合控制方法,研究了导弹初始快速大角度转弯问题。给出了直/气复合控制回路稳定性分析方法,并应用极点配置求得系统控制参数。最后对直/气复合控制回路稳定性进行了分析,对其时域跟踪进行了数学仿真。仿真结果表明,提出的控制方法可以提高系统转弯快速性,验证了复合控制方法的可行性。     

美军作战构想及其生成方法

随着战争复杂性剧增,作战构想的地位和作用日益凸显。美军以逻辑链为作战构想的基本表现形式,以作战设计为作战构想生成的思维工具,强调发挥作战艺术,提升作战构想质量,并构建了"四步一体"的作战构想生成流程。     

非高斯噪声下信号盲检测算法*

针对实际甚低频和超低频接收机不仅受非高斯噪声的影响,同时受到接收机内部和外部环境中高斯噪声影响的问题,对噪声采用高斯尺度混合分布和高斯分布的混合模型建模,根据混合模型的性质,设计了一种基于马尔可夫链蒙特卡罗方法的信号盲检测算法。盲检测算法在贝叶斯层次模型下,采用Gibbs抽样和M-H抽样更新参数,同步检测信道衰落系数、噪声模型参数和信号。算法迭代效率快、精度高。通过与最优检测性能比较,盲检测算法性能优异,对甚低频和超低频信号接收具有重要的现实意义。     

Selling to strategic and loss‐averse consumers: Stocking,procurement, and product design policies

Motivated by the presence of loss‐averse decision making behavior in practice, this article considers a supply chain consisting of a firm and strategic consumers who possess an S‐shaped loss‐averse utility function. In the model, consumers decide the purchase timing and the firm chooses the inventory level. We find that the loss‐averse consumers' strategic purchasing behavior is determined by their perceived gain and loss from strategic purchase delay, and the given rationing risk. Thus, the firm that is cognizant of this property tailors its inventory stocking policy based on the consumers' loss‐averse behavior such as their perceived values of gain and loss, and their sensitivity to them. We also demonstrate that the firm's equilibrium inventory stocking policy reflects both the economic logic of the traditional newsvendor inventory model, and the loss‐averse behavior of consumers. The equilibrium order quantity is significantly different from those derived from models that assume that the consumers are risk neutral and homogeneous in their valuations. We show that the firm that ignores strategic consumer's loss‐aversion behavior tends to keep an unnecessarily high inventory level that leads to excessive leftovers. Our numerical experiments further reveal that in some extreme cases the firm that ignores strategic consumer's loss‐aversion behavior generates almost 92% more leftovers than the firm that possesses consumers’ loss‐aversion information and takes it into account when making managerial decisions. To mitigate the consumer's forward‐looking behavior, we propose the adoption of the practice of agile supply chain management, which possesses the following attributes: (i) procuring inventory after observing real‐time demand information, (ii) enhanced design (which maintains the current production mix but improves the product performance to a higher level), and (iii) customized design (which maintains the current performance level but increases the variety of the current production line to meet consumers’ specific demands). We show that such a practice can induce the consumer to make early purchases by increasing their rationing risk, increasing the product value, or diversifying the product line. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 435–453, 2015