Contract Design Of A Product Service Supply Chain For "Equipment + Maintenance"

With the advancement of servitization of manufacturing industry,the equipment manufacturing industry is gradually changing from providing "equipment" to providing "equipment + maintenance" integrated systems.Different from the single equipment supply chain and the maintenance service supply chain,the mutual influence of equipment manufacturing and maintenance service increases the complexity of decision-making and cooperation of the product service supply chain,which is easy to lead to the imbalance of decision-making incentives and the loss of performance of the supply chain.At the same time,there is often information asymmetry among member enterprises of the product and service supply chain,which further increases the difficulty of aligning cooperation incentives among enterprises and intensifies the incentive imbalance of the supply chain.Therefore,it is worth studying how to design a reasonable and feasible cooperation contract of the product service supply chain based on "equipment + maintenance" integrated systems under asymmetric information.This article studies a product and service supply chain consisting of a component supplier,an equipment manufacturer,an equipment distributor,a third-party service provider and a customer enterprise.The members of the supply chain work together to provide integrated systems of equipment and maintenance services.Considering information asymmetry exists between the equipment manufacturer and the customer enterprise,the equipment manufacturer and the equipment distributor,the equipment manufacturer and the component supplier,the decision-making optimization theory and principal-agent theory are used to study the cooperation problem among the supply chain members in the process of servitization.The incentive contract is designed to promote servitization,and the influences of equipment manufacturing cost,service cost,demand uncertainty and asymmetric information on the cooperation problem among the supply chain members are further explored.Firstly,considering the maintenance service is provided by the customer enterprise,and the equipment availability is jointly determined by the manufacturing efforts of the equipment manufacturer and the maintenance service efforts of the customer enterprise,the contract design problem under the dual marginal effect is studied.By comparing the two benchmark models of centralized and decentralized decision making,the causes of supply chain performance loss under decentralized decision making and the necessity of designing coordination contracts are analyzed.Then,three kinds of contracts are proposed based on revenue sharing and cost sharing.It is found that the revenue sharing contract can effectively improve the manufacturing efforts of equipment manufacturers,and thus improve equipment availability and supply chain profit,but cannot achieve coordination.The revenue sharing and quality improvement cost sharing contract can further improve the manufacturing efforts of equipment manufacturers and achieve Pareto improvement.The revenue sharing and two-way cost sharing contract can realize both Pareto improvement and the perfect coordination of the supply chain.Secondly,considering the customer enterprise needs to replace the old equipment,and the new equipment availability is determined by the joint replacement efforts of both the customer enterprise and the equipment manufacturer in the equipment replacement stage,the preventive maintenance effort of the customer enterprise as well as the maintenance effort of the equipment manufacturer in the operation stage of the new equipment,the revisable contract design under the asymmetric cost information of the equipment manufacturer is studied.Through a two-stage joint effort model,the causes of supply chain performance loss under the case without contract revision and the feasible conditions for the revisable contract are analyzed.The results show that the revisable contract is better than the contract without revision in most cases because it can optimize the efforts of the equipment manufacturer in the two stages.The influence of information asymmetry and other factors on the value of contract revision is further analyzed.It turns out that the lower the probability of high-cost manufacturer in the market is,and the lower the cost coefficient of the low-cost manufacturer is,the more effectively the revisable contract can improve the expected profits of customer enterprises and the supply chain.However,as the role of the customer enterprise in the operation stage becomes more significant,the effect of contract revision on the improvement of expected profits of the customer enterprise and the supply chain decreases first and then increases.Thirdly,considering a product service supply chain consisting of one equipment manufacturer and one distributor in which the equipment manufacturer sells the equipment to the market through the distributor,the equipment manufacturer's development strategy of the extended warranty service under the condition of demand uncertainty is studied and the influence of different decision timing of the equipment manufacturer on the supply chain equilibrium is analyzed.Taking the case in which the equipment manufacturer does not provide extended warranty services as a benchmark,the cases where the equipment manufacturer develops extended warranty services but the decision timing is different are compared.The right timing of the equipment manufacturer to develop the extended warranty service is studied,and the motivation of the distributor to develop the extended warranty service is further analyzed.The results show that there are feasible conditions for manufacturers to develop extended warranty services,which depend on the decision timing of the equipment manufacturer,market price adjustment and customers' acceptance of the extended warranty service.Under different market conditions,the timing of the equipment manufacturer's development of extended warranty services affects the service level and the equipment price.Compared with the cases when the equipment manufacturer provides the extended warranty service,when the distributor provides the extended warranty service,the service level will be different.Finally,considering a product service supply chain consisting of one component supplier,one equipment manufacturer in which the component supplier provides key components for the equipment manufacturer and the equipment manufacturer sells the "equipment + maintenance" system to the customers,the optimal design of the component supply contract and the equipment manufacturer's maintenance service outsourcing strategy are studied.The case when equipment manufacturers outsource maintenance services is compared with the case when they provide maintenance services on their own.Based on this,the maintenance outsourcing strategy of the equipment manufacturer is obtained.The influence of market demand uncertainty,service cost and other factors on the equipment manufacturer's service outsourcing strategy as well as the influence of the manufacturer's service outsourcing strategy on the component supplier's component supply contract are further analyzed.The results show that the outsourcing strategy of the equipment manufacturer is related to the probability of high-type market demand,the cost coefficient of the third-party service provider and the size of the market.Regardless of the equipment manufacturer's maintenance outsourcing strategy,the component supplier always reduces the wholesale price when the market demand is high.