Research On Optimization And Cooperation Mechanism Of Co-Product Supply Chain

As a special kind of products,co-products,e.g.,pork,beef and mutton,blood products,petrochemicals,etc.,have some merits,like inherent indivisibility of supply,separable market demand and concomitant proportion of components,which have promoted coproducts become an important research direction in the field of operation management research.From the perspective of supply and demand,there is symbiosis between the different components of a separable product,but the demand for different components is often unbalanced.Some components are popular products with high profit margins,while some components are cold products with weak market demand and low profit margins.How to allocate the mismatch risk of unbalanced supply and demand is an important research issue.From the perspective of sales alliance strategy,whether to sell through components or to sell the product as a whole or to make mixed sales is more profitable,is there a cooperative alliance mechanism to make the alliance stable?From the perspective of supply chain product line design,in the face of the uncertainty of market size,how to design the breadth and depth of the product line of divisible products?The research on this series of questions has important theoretical significance and practical value.In view of this,this article focuses on the characteristics of divisible products and the structural characteristics of the supply chain,and studies the operation optimization and cooperation mechanism of divisible products,aiming to enrich the theoretical research on the supply chain of divisible products,and at the same time to provide theoretical reference for operations of the same type of products.Firstly,mismatch risk is a significant issue in such coproduct supply chains.Under the Stackelberg game setting,we consider a coproduct supply chain consisting of one producer acting as the leader and one retailer being the follower and establish a stylized model to study how the mismatch risk should be allocated.Two supply chain modes are considered,i.e.,the P-chain mode under which the producer is responsible for the processing activity and hence holds the mismatch risk,and the R-chain under which the retailer is responsible for the processing activity.We use the unbalanced ratio to reflect the degree of mismatch between supply and demand among different parts of the coproduct and study how the tradeoff between the bargaining power and the mismatch cost,by different mismatch risk allocations,influences the optimal decisions and the performances of the two parties as well as the whole supply chain.Our main findings include:(i)P-chain dominates R-chain from the perspective of the chain performance;and(ii)the upstream producer is not always better off in the P-chain under which he bears more mismatch risk.Numerical study shows the robustness of our main results and further studies the effect of demand uncertainty and the processing cost on the performance of P-chain as compared to R-chain.Secondly,in view of the problem of the cooperation mechanism of the coproducts alliance formation,based on the model setting of the research on the mismatched risk allocation model.Under the settings of cooperative game,a secondary supply chain consisting of a coproduct supplier and two retailers is constructed.We analyze the existence and conditions of the "core" of the grand coalition,and give an analysis of the stability of the alliance of the coproduct supply chain.The research of purchasing alliance can divide the problem of product supply chain cooperation alliance,using mathematical modeling,game analysis,equilibrium analysis and other methods to analyze the market equilibrium of joint purchasing.First,study the motivation of centralized procurement,extend the decision-making model of decentralized procurement to joint procurement,and use cooperative game theory to construct a game model for the income allocation among procurement alliance members,and obtain the internal motivation of alliance members to participate in joint procurement.It mainly comes from two aspects:on the one hand,the shared cost of the members of joint procurement is lower than the cost of decentralized procurement;on the other hand,it proves that under the centralized procurement mode,the existence of the "core" of alliance cooperation is reasonable for the benefits of centralized procurement,thereby ensuring the stability of the alliance.We find:When the processing cost is large and the market uncertainty is relatively small,and when the processing cost is small and the market demand uncertainty is large,centralized procurement is adopted.Finally,in view of the product line design of the divisible product supply chain,considering the uncertainty of the market size,the size and length of the product line of the coproduct supply chain are analyzed.In a secondary supply chain composed of a manufacturer and a distributor,through the price-dependent newsvendor model and the bileveloptimization method,the optimal product line decision in the case of single product and two types of products is analyzed separately,and expanded to multiple products,market size,and general distribution of customer types.We find:(?)when the uncertainty of the market size is high,that is,when the market size is unstable,and the process cost of product processing and classification is high,it is not for the manufacturer In other words,the types and quantities of coproducts should be reduced,and the length of the production line should be increased,that is,the quality gap should be increased.Under the potential impact of price gains,manufacturers'profits will increase;(?)When the degree of uncertainty of the product supply chain market size is low,that is,when the market size is relatively stable,and process cost of product processing and classification is low,for manufacturers,the types of coproducts should be increased At the same time,the length of the production line should be increased.Under the potential impact of economies of scale,manufacturers'profits will increase;(?)When the uncertainty of the market size is relatively medium,that is,the market size is relatively predictable,and the process cost of product processing and classification is relatively low,manufacturers should increase the types and quantities of divisible products.However,at this time,the length of the production line should be shortened.Under the potential impact of quality benefits,manufacturing profits will increase.Furthermore,this study focuses on separable products and investigates its mismatched risk allocation,alliance cooperation and product line design through numerical experiments.We first analysis the sensitivity of supply chain member's profits based on the uncertainty of market demand,imbalance ratio,processing cost in the experiment of mismatched risk allocation.Then,we discuss the stability of the cooperative alliance centering on demand uncertainty and processing cost.Finally,we consider the uncertainty of potential market size,manufacturer's production cost as well as classification cost,and conduct sensitivity analyses in the experiment of product line design.Our study contributes to the literature by addressing the operation and management of the separable product supply chain through studying the mismatched risk allocation problem,alliance formation problem and product line design problem.Moreover,this study also provides managerial implications to enterprises related to the operation and management decisions of production,processing and sales of separable products.It is also hoped that the study of this paper will become an important exploration in the research field of operation and management of coproducts,and provide some ideas for other follow-up issues,such as inventory,allocation,transportation and matching of coproducts supply chain.