Vendor Managed inventory, from concept to processes, for an unified view

International audienceIn a supplier-customer relationship, Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) is currently used to monitor the customer's inventory replenishment. However the integration of VMI implies consequences on the collaboration process that links the different planning processes of each partner. This paper proposes a unified view of the VMI: beyond the short term pull system inventory replenishment, partners have to share their vision of the demand, their requirements and their constraints to fix middle/long term common objectives for each article concerned by VMI. There are many ways to specify these links between VMI and partner's planning processes

Incentive effects of common and separate queues with multiple servers: The principal-agent perspective

A two-server service network has been studied by Gilbert and Weng [13] fromthe principal-agent perspective. In the model, services are rendered by twoindependent facilities coordinated by an agency. The agency must devise astrategy to allocate customers to the facilities and determine the compensation.A common queue allocation scheme and separate queue allocation scheme are thencompared. It has been shown that the separate queue system gives morecompetition incentives to the independent facilities and induces a higherservice capacity. The main aim of this paper is to extend the results of thetwo-server queueing model to the case of multiple-server queueing model. Ouranalysis shows that in the case of multiple servers the separate queueallocation scheme creates more competition incentives for servers to increasetheir service capacities. In particular, when there are not severe diseconomiesassociated with increasing service capacity, the separate queue allocationscheme gives a lower expected sojourn time in equilibrium. © 2009 IEEE.published_or_final_versionProceedings of the 39th International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering (CIE39), Troyes, France, 6-8 July 2009, p. 1249-125

Coordinating pricing and inventory decisions in a multi-level supply chain: A game-theoretic approach

This paper concerns coordination of enterprise decisions such as suppliers and components selection, pricing and inventory in a multi-level supply chain composed of multiple suppliers, a single manufacturer and multiple retailers. The problem is modeled as a three-level dynamic non-cooperative game. Analytical and computational methods are developed to determine the Nash equilibrium of the game. Finally, a numerical study in computer industry is conducted to understand the influence of the market scale parameter and the components selection strategy on the optimal decisions and profits of the supply chain as well as its constituent members. Several research findings have been obtained. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

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Interactions of Bargaining Power and Introduction of Online Channel in Two Competing Supply Chains

This paper studies the effect of dual-channel format on supply chain’s competition ability and the effect of different bargaining powers on the competition between two supply chains and the optimal pricing decisions of all supply chain members when one supply chain introduces an online retailing channel. We develop four game models and obtain the optimal pricing decisions in closed form of these models and give some sensitivity analysis through numerical approach. Some new managerial insights are obtained as follows: Regardless of the two supply chain members’ bargaining forms, the optimal price, the maximal demand, and the maximal profit decrease as the self-price sensitivity decreases. The industry holds advantage in getting higher profit when the supply chain without online retailing channel is led by the retailer. In addition, we find that a manufacturer as a leader of its supply chain can get more profit when the competing supply chain’s leader is the manufacturer than when the competing supply chain’s leader is the retailer

Substitution Effects in Supply Chains with Asymmetric Information Distribution and Upstream Competition

Inventory management in markets with substituting customers is extremely challenging, not only for a downstream wholesaler, but also for upstream manufacturers. Motivated by the structures in the agrochemical market, we analyze the optimal production and stocking quantities of a manufacturer and a wholesaler, respectively, in a two-stage supply chain with upstream competition and vertical information asymmetries. We characterize a monopolistic wholesaler's optimal stocking quantities and show that these quantities are not necessarily monotonic, neither in the available production quantities nor in the customers' substitution rates. We further derive the optimal production quantities of a monopolistic and a competitive manufacturer when they are incompletely informed about the wholesaler's stocking quantities. We find that the introduction of competition may lead to decreasing production quantities for some products. Furthermore, a product's end-of-season inventories at the manufacturer which arise due to information asymmetries may decrease even when initial production levels increase. Key words: customer substitution; supply chain; asymmetric information; competition; inventory managemen

A Petri net based simulation to study the impact of customer response to stock-out on supply chain performance

Abstract: Based on a Petri-net based simulation model, we investigate the effect of different customer response to stock-out on both the stock-out supply chain and the competing supply chain. Five types of customer stock-out responses are incorporated in the model to quantitatively assess the correlation between customer response and supply chain performance including bullwhip effect (BWE), on-hand inventory, and backlog level. After presenting the results of a series of Petri-net based simulation experiments, we discuss opportunities for both manufacturers and retailers to work better together to mitigate supply chain disruption. We also discuss the value of information sharing on mitigating BWE