Decision support models for supplier development: Systematic literature review and research agenda

The continuing trend towards sourcing components and semi-finished goods for less vertically integrated manufacturing systems globally leads to a dramatic increase in supply options for companies. To ensure that companies benefit from the potentials global sourcing offers, supplier-buyer relationships need to be managed efficiently. Due to the decreasing share of value-adding activities provided in-house, suppliers are more and more considered as an essential contributor to the buying company's competitive position. Consequently, to realize and sustain competitive advantages, companies try to establish institutionalized long-term relationships to their most important suppliers and to actively improve the productivity and performance of their supplier base. To support supplier development in practice, researchers have developed decision support models that provide assistance in selecting and implementing suitable supplier development activities. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and systematic overview of decision support models for supplier development and to develop a research agenda that helps to identify promising areas for future research in this area. First, typical applications for supplier development as well as potential development measures that can be adopted to improve the performance of suppliers are identified. Secondly, a systematic literature review with a focus on decision support models for supplier development is conducted. Based on the analysis of the literature, we define a research agenda that synthesizes key trends and promising research opportunities and thus highlight areas where more decision support models are needed to foster supplier development initiatives in practice

The influence of financial conditions on optimal ordering and payment policies under progressive interest schemes

In many business-to-business transactions, the buyer is not required to pay immediately after the receipt of an order, but is instead allowed to postpone the payment to its suppliers for a certain period. In such a situation, the buyer can either settle the account at the end of the credit period or authorize the payment later, usually at the expense of interest that is charged by the supplier on the outstanding balance. Some payment terms, which are often referred to as trade credit contracts, contain progressive interest charges. In such cases, the supplier offers a sequence of credit periods, where the interest rate that is charged on the outstanding balance usually increases from period to period. If a buyer faces a progressive trade credit scheme, various options for settling the unpaid balance exist, where the financial impact of each option depends on the current credit interest structure and the alternative investment conditions. This paper studies the influence of different financial conditions in terms of alternative investment opportunities and credit interest structure on the optimal ordering and payment policies of a buyer on the condition that the supplier provides a progressive interest scheme. For this purpose, mathematical models are developed and analyzed

Economic ordering and payment policies under progressive payment schemes and time-value of money

Trade credits have received considerable attention in recent years and have become one of the most important sources of short-term funding for many companies. The paper at hand studies the optimal ordering and payment policies of a buyer assuming that the supplier offers a progressive interest scheme. The contribution to the literature is twofold. First, the different financial conditions of the companies involved are taken into account by assuming that the credit interest rate of the buyer may, but not necessarily has to, exceed the interest rate charged by the supplier. In addition, the time-value of money is considered in this scenario which is relevant when trade credit terms are valid for a long period of time and payment flows need to be evaluated by their net present value to ensure long-term profitability. The models proposed enable decision makers to improve ordering and payment decisions and the results reveal that taking into account the temporal allocation of payments, the prevailing interest relation influences replenishment policies significantly

The lot sizing problem: A tertiary study

This paper provides a survey of literature reviews in the area of lot sizing. Its intention is to show which streams of research emerged from Harris' seminal lot size model, and which major achievements have been accomplished in the respective areas. We first develop the methodology of this review and then descriptively analyze the sample. Subsequently, a content-related classification scheme for lot sizing models is developed, and the reviews contained in our sample are discussed in light of this classification scheme. Our analysis shows that various extensions of Harris' lot size model were developed over the years, such as lot sizing models that include multi-stage inventory systems, incentives, or productivity issues. The aims of our tertiary study are the following: firstly, it helps primary researchers to position their own work in the literature, to reproduce the development of different types of lot sizing problems, and to find starting points if they intend to work in a new research direction. Secondly, the study identifies several topics that offer opportunities for future secondary research

Energy implications in the single-vendor single-buyer integrated production inventory model

Part 1: SustainabilityInternational audienceIncreasing energy efficiency is one of the main objectives of the Directive 2009/28/EC of the European Commission (called 20-20-20), which aims at decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by jointly increasing the use of renewable energy and improving energy efficiency, all by 20% until 2020. To reduce energy consumption in producing and distributing products, it is of major importance to consider energy consumption in the whole supply chain and for all activities associated with production and distribution. For this reason, this paper studies a single-vendor single-buyer integrated production-inventory system and explicitly takes account of energy consumption. The use of energy is weighted with a cost factor and evaluated together with classical production-inventory costs. We find that if energy costs are considered together with traditional cost components, then the inventory costs of the system increase slightly in the optimum, but the total costs of the system decrease and we observe great energy savings