| The increasing global economic integration has complicated supply chain network and intensified the supply chain uncertainties.The uncertainties in supply chain management mainly arise from supply uncertainty,demand uncertainty and cost uncertainty.These uncertainties post great challenges to supply chain managers.Multi-sourcing,which is an effective operational strategy in mitigating supply uncertainty,is widely used in industrial operation.To cope with demand and cost uncertainty,many upstream and downstream supply chain members have teamed up to share demand and cost information.The supply chain with n suppliers and two manufacturers is considered.The manufacturers own demand and cost information.Moreover,the suppliers can make a decision on whether to take production cost reduction effort to response to the manufacturers’demand and cost information.In such a supply chain,the manufacturers’ strategies of vertical demand information sharing,vertical cost information sharing and multi-sourcing are jointed investigated in the settings with and without the suppliers’ production cost reduction effort,respectively.A multi-stage game model is built to solve these problems.Managerial insights about vertical demand information sharing,vertical cost information sharing and multi-sourcing are obtained based on analytical and simulation analysis.The manufacturers’ vertical demand information sharing and multi-sourcing in the setting without the suppliers’ production cost reduction effort are jointly examined.It is found that the manufacturers sharing demand forecast information with suppliers increases the suppliers’ ex-ante payoffs,decreases the manufacturers’ ex-ante payoffs.Thus,the manufacturers have no willingness to disclose demand forecast information to suppliers for free.However,under a side-payment contract,there are two symmetric equilibriums:complete demand information sharing and no demand information sharing.Complete demand information sharing approximates to Pareto-optimal when manufacturers’ forecast error is less enough.The impact of supplier correlation on multi-sourcing is investigated.It is found that if the number of suppliers is large,the manufacturers could choose lowly correlated suppliers to make multi-source.If the number of suppliers is small,whether the manufacturers choose highly correlated or lowly correlated suppliers is dependent on the degree of supply uncertainty,forecast error and the manufacturers’ vertical demand information sharing strategies.Under certain conditions,the lower the supplier correlation is,the higher all supply chain member and total supply chain’s payoffs are.The manufacturers’ vertical demand information sharing and multi-sourcing in the setting with the suppliers’ production cost reduction effort are jointly examined.It is found that the manufacturers are willing to share demand information with suppliers for free only when effort cost coefficient is small enough.In addition,the asymmetry vertical demand information sharing strategy exists.When effort cost coefficient is large,under certain conditions,the suppliers can successfully induce both manufacturers to share demand information with them by playing a side-payment to manufacturers.Multi-sourcing is investigated based on the assumption of complete demand information sharing or no demand information sharing.It is found that whether the manufacturers choose highly correlated or lowly correlated suppliers to multi-source depends on effort cost coefficient,the number of suppliers,the degree of supply uncertainty,forecast error and the manufacturers’ vertical demand information sharing strategies.Moreover,the suppliers,the manufacturers and the total supply chain’s ex-ante payoffs decrease with supplier correlation under certain conditions.The manufacturers’ vertical cost information sharing and multi-sourcing in the setting without the suppliers’ production cost reduction effort are jointly examined.It is found that both manufacturers are willing to share cost information with suppliers for free.Complete cost information sharing increases supply chain members and the total supply chain’s ex-ante payoffs.In multi-sourcing,whether the manufacturers choose highly correlated or low correlated suppliers to make multi-source is dependent on the number of suppliers,the degree of supply uncertainty,cost correlated coefficient and the manufacturers’ vertical cost information sharing strategies.The suppliers’ payoffs decrease with supplier correlation,while the total supply chain’s payoff decreases with supplier correlation under some conditions.The manufacturers’ vertical cost information sharing and multi-sourcing in the setting with the suppliers’ production cost reduction effort are jointly examined.It is found that the suppliers,the manufacturers and the total supply chain benefit from complete cost information sharing under certain conditions.Multi-sourcing is investigated based on the assumption of complete cost information sharing or no cost information sharing.It is found that whether the manufacturers choose highly correlated or lowly correlated suppliers to multi-source is dependent on suppliers number,effort cost coefficient,the degree of supply uncertainty,cost correlated coefficient,and the manufacturers’ vertical cost information sharing strategies.Moreover,under some conditions,the suppliers with low supplier correlation benefit to both the suppliers and the manufacturers.In general,facing uncertain demand,the suppliers who make production cost reduction effort to response to the manufacturers’ demand information can successfully induce the manufacturers to share demand information with them for free under certain condition.Facing cost uncertainty,the suppliers who make production cost reduction effort to response to the manufacturers’ cost information will damage the manufacturers’sharing cost information with them.The analytical and simulation analysis reveals that the suppliers’production cost reduction behavior imposes little influence on the manufacturers’ multi-sourcing regardless of demand or cost uncertainty. |
