Research On Coordination Mechanism Of Supply Chain

With the increasing competition due to market globalization, to achieve a quickresponse to rapidly changing customer requirements, supply chain management(SCM), a novel management mode, has been receiving more and more attention ofmanagers, consultants and researchers. Amongst various entities and functional unitsalong a supply chain (SC), tight activity coordination pattern is needed to achieve aglobal performance optimization. Effective coordination incentive mechanisms shouldbe built to guarantee risk sharing, chain-wide rewards sharing, information sharingand convenient communications among SC members, to reduce inventory levels andlower total operational cost, thus to improve SC's competitive power and system-wideperformance. Based on the research in home and abroad, the thesis pursues an in-depth researchon supply chain coordination (SCC) mechanisms (including information sharingmechanism and supply chain contracts) based on system science, game theory,principle-agent model, optimal control theory, operations research, multi-agentapproach and information technology. Details are as follows: Based on a detailed analysis on the concepts of SC and SCM, a more accuratedefinition of SCC is given employing system science firstly. Then SCC is morerationally classified, from both the microcosmic and macroscopic aspects. Theconcepts of coordination mode and coordination mechanism are also inteperated here,which are right the basis of the research pursued in the succeeding chapters. We analyze the value of demand information sharing in a two-level supply chaininvolving one supplier-multiple retailer model in which demands at the retailers maybe correlated. Taking into account the leadtime of both supplier and retailers, weresearch the effects of information sharing on the reduction of inventory level, costand leadtime. Optimized SC contract models with symmetric information and asymmetricinformation (the retailer's cost structure is asymmetric information) under the demandwith price elasticity are developed, in which three SC contracts with symmetricinformation (which are supply contract under central control, supply contract underdecentralized control and all-unit quantity discount contract respectively) and threetypes of supply contracts with symmetric information (including wholesale pricingcontract, linear contract and nonlinear contract) are proposed. Based on the analysis of informatiozation requirements of SCM, a layered SCMsystem is constructed, a novel SCMs model is also proposed, in which the functionsand the interactive coordination mechanisms of different agents are elaboratelyinterpreted. Employing multi-agent theory, CORBA specification, KQML protocoland Java,a SCM prototype system is developed.