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     

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.     

一种压水堆负荷跟踪控制方法

为有效协调反应堆功率与需求负荷能量间的平衡,提高运行过程的安全性、机动性和经济性,当前普遍采用压水堆负荷琅踪运行模式.由于反应堆系统具有高度复杂、非线性、时变等特点,鲁通方法很难达到良好控制效果.通过合理简化,基于集总参数方法建立了压水堆负荷跟踪系统模型,并据此模型要求构造了优化目标函数,采用改进的二次寻优混沌算法对现...     

消防取水码头的建造形式及选用原则

通过对消防取水码头的法规要求、建造形式的分析,就消防工作中应如何根据实际情况选用不同建造形式的消防取水码头进行了探讨,并对消防取水码头的建造和使用提出了建议。     

建筑设计消防审核常见技术问题探析

针对建筑设计消防审核工作中容易出现的技术问题,从消防车道与建筑中人行通道的设置、自动喷水灭火系统末端试水装置与试水阀的设置、特殊场所快速响应喷头的选用、标准喷头的设置、自动喷水灭火系统集热板的应用、室内消火栓系统阀门的设置以及防火卷帘两侧火灾探测器组与警报装置的设置等方面解读了相关消防技术规范的规定,系统分析了建筑设计消防审核中的常见错误与问题,提出了有关技术规范规定的合理解释和使用建议。     

受限空间雾化射流降温与加湿作用数值分析

以雾化射流预防、控制受限空间内油气热安全事故为工程背景,综合可压缩流场控制方程、k-ε湍流模型、粒子动力学模型与相变传热模型,构建了描述受限空间内雾化射流降温与加湿作用的数值分析模型。借助Fluent流体动力学仿真软件,以1 600 mm×200 mm二维狭长受限空间中不同工况的雾化射流为算例,对雾化射流降温与加湿过程进行了数值模拟,并探讨了雾化射流流量与粒径的不同对上述作用的影响。所得结果为进一步探究雾化射流降温与加湿行为,推进雾化射流在热安全防护领域的工程应用提供借鉴和参考。     

水雾扩散模型仿真

建立水雾红外衰减模型时,通常把水雾空间看作单一均匀整体处理,然而雾滴的扩散现象使水雾的雾滴密度无法保证处处相等,所以仿真结果与实际情况相比普遍存在较大偏差。针对这一问题,基于高斯扩散理论与Mie散射理论,提出了一种新的建模方案。通过将水雾空间划分为多个子空间,并计算每个子空间内水雾消光性能的建模方法,提高建模的准确性。同时结合红外制导导弹来袭的方向变化,计算出不同方向上的水雾消光性能。从仿真结果可以看出,这种建模方式能够很好地克服以往建模方法的缺陷,为探索水雾的精确建模提供了一种新思路。     

A location‐inventory model with lateral transshipments

We study an infinite horizon periodic stochastic inventory system consisting of retail outlets and customers located on a homogenous line segment. In each period, the total demand, generated by the customers on the line, is normally distributed. To better match supply and demand, we incorporate lateral transshipments. We propose a compact model in which the strategic decisions—the number and locations of retail outlets—are determined simultaneously with the operational decisions—the inventory replenishment and transshipment quantities. We find the optimal balance between the risk‐pooling considerations, which drive down the optimal number of retail outlets, and lateral transshipments, which drive up the optimal number of retail outlets. We also explore the sensitivity of the optimal number of retail outlets to various problem parameters. This article presents a novel way of integrating lateral transshipments in the context of an inventory‐location model. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Specification vagueness and supply quality risk

Specifying quality requirement is integral to any sourcing relationship, but vague and ambiguous specifications can often be observed in practice, especially when a buyer is in the initial stage of sourcing a new product. In this research, we study a supplier's production incentives under vague or exact quality specifications. We prove that a vague specification may in fact motivate the supplier to increase its quantity provision, resulting in a higher delivery quality. Vague quality specification can therefore be advantageous for a buyer to screen potential suppliers with an initial test order, and then rely on the received quality level to set more concrete quality guidelines. There is a degree, though, to which vague quality specification can be effective, as too much vagueness may decrease the supplier's quantity provision and hence the expected delivery quality. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

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