Overview and classification of coordination contracts within forward and reverse supply chains

Among coordination mechanisms, contracts are valuable tools used in both theory and practice to coordinate various supply chains. The focus of this paper is to present an overview of contracts and a classification of coordination contracts and contracting literature in the form of classification schemes. The two criteria used for contract classification, as resulted from contracting literature, are transfer payment contractual incentives and inventory risk sharing. The overview classification of the existing literature has as criteria the level of detail used in designing the coordination models with applicability on the forward and reverse supply chains.Coordination contracts; forward supply chain; reverse supply chain

Asymmetric Information Mitigation in Supply Chain: A Systematic Literature Review

With the level of competition and consumer demand is changing rapidly, the speed and accuracy of the information flow in the supply chain increasingly necessary. Sharing of information between the parties in a supply chain plays an important role in improving the sustainability of a business, but imperfection information is inevitable because each party in the supply chain has a different objective. This condition increases the importance of a research on the mitigation of asymmetric information in the supply chain, therefore the purpose of this study was to conduct a review of previous studies related to overcoming the asymmetric information and map research trend on mitigating asymmetric information in the supply chain. We used systematic literature review (SLR) methods to analyze the data collected from Web of Science and Scopus database from 2005 to 2016. The results of this study can be used as a guide and a reference for further research related to overcoming the asymmetry of information in the supply chain in every industrial sector

Research on The Optimization Strategy of Cross-border B2B Supply Chain with Service Cost Information Sharing

The development of cross-border e-commerce highlights the importance of service integration and information sharing. This paper considers a cross-border B2B supply chain which consists of a local manufacturer and a foreign trade service integrator. The service integrator holds the service cost structure as private information. The optimal decisions and maximum expected profits of the manufacturer and service integrator are analyzed under two scenarios：no information sharing versus information sharing. The paper finds that information sharing always benefit the manufacturer but not for the service integrator. In the meanwhile, the value of information is increased with the manufacturer’s forecast uncertainty about the service integrator’s service cost. The whole supply chain can get pareto improvement through the Nash bargaining mechanism

Comparison between minimum purchase, quantity flexibility contracts and spot procurement in a supply chain

When, in a supply chain, a supplier and a buyer have the choice of transaction form to do business, the equilibrium transaction form which emerges is much more constrained than previously envisaged in literature. In this paper, two forms of long-term supply contracts and procurement in the spot market are compared. A capacity constrained service provider and a buyer of such service choose among three different transaction forms: spot procurement, minimum purchase commitment and quantity flexibility contracts. The ultimate demand the buyer has to satisfy and the spot market price of the input she has to purchase from the supplier are exogenous stochastic processes. Complete analytical results and a numerical example are presented. This paper builds upon recent supply chain contract literature by trying to join in one setting problems which up till now were considered in isolation.contracts, supply chain, statistical decision theory, optimization techniques, transactional relationships

Coordination mechanism of dual-channel supply chains considering retailer innovation inputs

In response to the online channels established by manufacturers, physical retailers are starting to offer innovative services, which will intensify conflicts between manufacturers and retailers. Considering that the conflict will affect the operation efficiency and sustainable development of the supply chain, the coordination mechanism of a dual-channel supply chain has been established. In this study, we construct the Stackelberg game model based on consumer utility theory to analyze the complex mechanism of retailers' innovation input level affecting supply chain operation and design the double coordination mechanism. The results show that: (1) an optimal combination of wholesale prices, retail prices and innovation input levels can optimize the operational efficiency of the supply chain, (2) Noncooperation among channel members affects the retailer's product pricing, decreases the market share of the physical channel and increases the market demand of manufacturers, (3) The dual coordination mechanism can alleviate channel conflicts, which can improve the operational efficiency of the supply chain. This study provides several insights on the theory of organizational coordination and sustainable development in conflicts of dual-channel supply chains

The impact of coordination and information on transport procurement

Transport cost is second in importance after production cost in industry. It is the purpose of the present paper to study the impact of information sharing and contractual instruments between a supply chain and its transport suppliers. After reviewing the literature, we propose a model to measure the benefits in terms of transport cost and standard deviation of transport cost. We evaluate three scenarios over one period reiterated for a shipper carrier two-echelon model with a mix of long- term and short-term procurement strategies: perfect information, asymmetric information and private information at one level of the supply chain. We evaluate the transfer in rent between carrier and shipper according to the information known and give some insights on optimal contract parameters.Supply chain management, coordination, contracts, information sharing, game theory, mechanisms

Incentive Decision on Safety Investment of Supply Chain of Agricultural Products in “Agricultural Super-Docking”

Since the “agriculture super-docking” mode was introduced in China in 2007, remarkable success has been made in reducing the transaction cost and improving the quality safety of agricultural products. However, the quality safety issues of agricultural products still occur frequently because both specialized farmers’ cooperatives and supermarkets have insufficient safety investment. In order to study the necessity, goal, and incentive decision schemes of safety investment in “agriculture super-docking” supply chain, three kinds of models, which include noncooperatives distributed decision-making model, centralized decision-making model, and incentive coordination models led by cooperatives and supermarkets, are, respectively, set up in this paper. Conclusions are drawn as follows: when making the uncooperative decentralized decision, both cooperatives and supermarkets have the moral risks to decrease the safety investment, but appropriate measures can achieve the coordination of the supply chain; when achieving the coordination of supply chain, the two contacts under the guidance of cooperatives and supermarkets are the same, and the schemes of distributing profits are also the same. Moreover, a practical case is given to improve the effectiveness and feasibility of the incentive decision schemes

Analysis of the Project Supply Chains: Coordination and Fair Allocation

This research investigates how project contracts can coordinate the supply chain between a project manager and contractor and if the solutions can be ensured as equitable. The main features of this type of supply chain are the trade-offs between the selection of a higher rate of resource consumption with a consequent higher cost to the contractor and a lower rate of resource consumption leading to later delivery and a reduction of the project-reward to the project manager. This broader problem could lead to a coordination problem for the overall supply chain. This research proposed a solution to this broader problem in two different scenarios: Take it or leave it scenario and negotiation scenario. Finally, the fair allocation of the risks and benefits and the related decision-making issues are addressed as one of the behavioural barriers to the supply chain coordination. The coordination issues in a take it or leave it scenario are addressed using time-based and fixed price project contracts using Stackelberg games. Models of coordination were proposed with time-based contracts, but the fixed price contracts failed to coordinate. The coordination problems in negotiation scenario are addressed with the Nash's bargaining, the Kalai Smorodinsky bargaining, and the utilitarian approach. A cost plus contract has been found to dominate the solutions over any cost sharing contract and fixed price contract for Nash's bargaining and Kalai Smorodinsky bargaining cases. Finally, the issues of fairness of allocation of risks and benefits as one of the challenges of supply chain coordination, have been investigated. The fixed price contracts were found to coordinate the supply chain under consideration alongside the time-based contracts if the members had fairness concern. Some of the key features of this research include the incorporation of various probability distributions for the project completion time and cost, the inclusion of various forms of risk preference, and addressing the challenges of fair allocation in project supply chains

On the high-quality development of “blockchain +” enabled smart tourism

Promoting the integrated application of blockchain technology and smart tourism is conducive to improving the efficiency of smart tourism public service platform and guiding the innovation of tourism public service mode; It is conducive to cultivating the new connotation of smart tourism development and activating the new driving force of tourism development; It is conducive to cultivating new forms of tourism and providing new opportunities for the development and transformation of tourism. Many regions have laid out tourism and smart tourism as demonstration application fields for the deep integration of blockchain and real economy. Its basic orientation is to build blockchain tourism platform, establish multi-party consensus mechanism, build blockchain tourism credit management system, expand application fields and enrich application scenarios. In order to accelerate the high-quality development of tourism enabled by “blockchain + smart tourism”: Firstly, accelerate the research, formulation and introduction of relevant policy implementation plans; secondly, build a smart tourism ecological engineering system supported by blockchain technology; thirdly, try to build a blockchain tourism credit management system to solve the market pain points; fourthly, focus on promoting tourism consumption blockchain points to build a global tourism chain.

A win-win supply chain solution using project contracts with bargaining games

For product supply chains, contractual relationships that provide win-win outcomes between the supply chain members, have been found to offer optimum results. However, for bargaining situations where time/cost is the source of the uncertainty, i.e. projects, there is limited knowledge available on how contracts can be used to establish win-win relations. This paper investigates whether cost-sharing project contracts can establish a win-win solution in project supply chains where the project manager is risk-neutral and the contractor is risk-averse. The paper examines how the theory can be extended beyond the symmetrical normal distributions to asymmetrical beta and gamma distributions that are more appropriate, and so more often used, for project completion times. Besides using the Nash bargaining approach for analyzing the bargaining process, the paper also analyzes the bargaining problems using the Kalai-Smorodinsky and Utilitarian approaches to bargaining. It was found that the solutions from cost-plus contracts dominate any other form of cost-sharing contract, and so they provide a win-win solution for both members of the supply chain for the cases of Nash and Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining. However, this is not the case for Utilitarian bargaining. A numerical exercise was conducted to investigate the results and implications of how the models would work in practice. The research shows that from a theoretical perspective, cost-plus contracts are the optimal bargaining solution not only when using a normal distribution, but also when using more appropriate asymmetrical distributions. This optimality is robust for the Nash and Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining approaches, but not for the Utilitarian approach whose sensitivity to noise makes it an inappropriate choice here