Research On Profit Allocation In Assembly Supply Chain With Coalitions

In recent years, the design and manufacture of large scale equipment plays an important role in the rapid economic development. A set of large scale equipment, which is made up of parts of subsystems and components, is often manufactured in an assembly supply chain. Because of the complexity of large scale equipment, the structure of the assemble supply chain becomes more complex, for example, the assemble supply chain is not limited to one or two tiers, or there are coalitions in the chain. Furthermore, the information in the assemble supply chain may not be perfect. We model an assembly supply chain with coalitions and study the profit allocation problem in it, both under perfect information and asymmetric information.Firstly, we use VCG mechanisms and Shapley value method to allocate the profit in a coalition in an assembly supply chain. Secondly, since it's hard for VCG mechanisms to achieve budget-balanced in many contexts where they can be used, we develop a new mechanism which is budget-balanced in probability, and characterized the proposition of the new mechanism. Thirdly, we model the profit allocation in assembly supply chain with coalitions, when information is perfect, which is made up of two steps. In the first step, assembler bargain with suppliers and supplier coalitions; in the second step, suppliers in a supplier coalition distribute the profit. Finally, when there is asymmetric information, that is to say, information is not perfect, almost budget-balanced VCG mechanism is used to reveal the information in the assembly supply chain with coalitions under asymmetric information.The model under perfect information is expanded to the situations when (1) the assemble supply chain is three tiers; (2) the assembler takes part in the design and manufacture of the subsystem; (3) the suppliers are asymmetric.Theoretically this paper is based on coalition game theory and Mechanism Design theory, while practically this paper insists finding a proper way to apply theory to real assembly supply chain.