Research On Supply Chain Coordination Under Procurement Agent

Since 1980s, fierce competition in global market forced enterprises to provide low-cost, high-quality and flexible-designed products. In order to explore the potential benefits, manufacturers have recognized it is vital to establish strategic cooperative partnership with suppliers. Consequently supply chain management (SCM) extended to strategic cooperation in procurement between manufacturers and their direct suppliers. Procurement is a key link in SCM, which integrates supply with production demand. As a new type of procurement mode under SC circumstances, procurement agent (PA), with its low-cost, efficient and fast characteristics, may reduce procurement cost, accelerate cash flow, control business risks, as well as enhance customer service level. Therefore, the research on SC coordination under procurement agent is of great significance.On the basis of related literature on SC coordination and procurement agent, the SC coordination issues under procurement agent were discussed from two aspects, SC contract and information sharing. We used contract theory, differential theory, game theory, etc., and the methods of theory analysis and normative analysis. First of all, we established the basic model of SC under procurement agent. And joint contract mechanism combining markdown-money contract and fill-shortage contract was designed to ensure the optimal procurement decision to reach the concentrate decision-making level. Meanwhile, we analyzed how the contracts influenced the procurement agent behavior and shared the risks between procurement agent and manufacture.Secondly, sharing information in the SC coordination was discussed. We used game theory to analyze the economic benefits of information sharing under procurement agent, proving that both SC members and overall profit increased as a result of the higher information sharing level. Besides, we qualitatively analyzed the factors which caused SC members not willing to share information. And SC information sharing strategies under procurement agent were provided.