Research On Inventory Routing Coordination Problem With Revenue Sharing Contract

The topic selection comes from the National Natural Science Foundation Project (NO.70771034),the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of PR China (NO.200565), the PhD. Programs Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (NO.20060359007) and the Major Project of Key Research Base on Humanities and Social Sciences Education of Department of Guangdong Province (NO. 08JDXM63003).Following'competitive advantage'in 1980s and'process reengineering'in 1990s, Supply Chain Management (SCM for short) has becoming a hot topic in various industries. As one of the core issues, the problem of Inventory Control has been already researched a lot in the past and got many wonderful achievements. However, the overall efficiency of the supply chain may be not optimal if the decisions of inventory and distribution and made respectively for the cost of distribution, which is a key link in the supply chain, accounts for a large proportion in the total cost of the whole supply chain. Inventory Routing Problem (IRP for short) is just the integration of the theory of Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP for short) and Inventory Control theory, which creates a bridge between the supplier and the distributors and made optimal decisions to minimize the total cost consisting of inventory and transportation under the type of the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI for short). How to control the inventory and distribution effectively has become the challenge among academic and industries.Recalling the researches on Inventory Routing Problem in resent years, it will be founded that the existing literatures are mainly based on the integrated supply chain to made decisions, while the relationship between the upstream of the supply chain and the downstream is competition-cooperation. In addition, the existing literatures almost assumed that the information is completed, which means the information is symmetric between the members of the supply chain. However, information distortion or time delay in the transmission process often leads to asymmetric information in the practice. In response to these problems, the specific contents of this dissertation are as follows:(1) Research of the coordination policy in a non-integrated supply chain. Considering a two-echelon supply chain consisting of a supplier and a set of distributors, we study the Inventory Routing Problems under the situations that the demand is constant and the demand is flexible with the selling price respectively. And then we establish the models when the partners of the supply chain are independent decision-making as well as using the revenue-sharing contracts to coordinate. Last, we get a result that the revenue-sharing contracts can achieve an effective coordination of the supply chain.(2) Study the Inventory Routing Problem under information asymmetry. Under the assumption of the demand is price-related, we analyze the game structures when the changing rate of the demand with the price fluctuations is symmetric information or asymmetric information respectively.(3) Show the effectiveness of adopting a mixed parallel genetic algorithm to solve the model. Using C-W saving algorithm combining with genetic algorithm, the optimal replenishment cycle and distribution paths has been reached under independent decision-making or employing coordinated strategy respectively . In addition, numerical instants are given to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm based on the data of the Spare Parts Warehouse of Chery Automobile.The research results presented above not only enrich the content of Inventory Routing Problem theory, but also provide more sufficient scientific evidence for decision makes in the practice.