No abstract

The existing outsourcing literature has generally overlooked the cost differential and contract negotiations between manufacturers and suppliers (by assuming identical cost structures and adopting the Stackelberg framework). One fundamental question yet to be addressed is whether upstream suppliers' cost efficiency is always beneficial to downstream manufacturers in the presence of competition and negotiations. In other words, does low cost outsourcing always lead to a win–win outcome? To answer this question, we adopt a multiunit bilateral bargaining framework to investigate competing manufacturers' sourcing decisions. We analyze two supply chain structures: one-to-one channels, in which each manufacturer may outsource to an exclusive supplier; and one-to-two channels, in which each manufacturer may outsource to a common supplier. We show that, under both structures, low cost outsourcing may lead to a win–lose outcome in which the suppliers gain and the manufacturers lose. This happens because suppliers' cost advantage may backfire on competing manufacturers through two negative effects. First, a decrease of upstream cost weakens a manufacturer's bargaining position by reducing her disagreement payoff (i.e., her insourcing profit) because the competing manufacturer can obtain a low cost position through outsourcing. Second, in one-to-two channels, the common supplier's bargaining position is strengthened with a lower cost because his disagreement payoff increases (i.e., his profit from serving only one manufacturer increases). The endogeneity of disagreement payoffs in our model highlights the importance of modeling firm negotiations under competition. Moreover, we identify an interesting bargaining externality between competing manufacturers when they outsource to a common supplier. Because the supplier engages in two negotiations, his share of profit from the trade with one manufacturer affects the total surplus of the trade with the other manufacturer. Because of this externality, surprisingly, as a manufacturer's bargaining power decreases, her profit under outsourcing may increase and it may be more likely for her to outsource. This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management.

W e are living in an era in which data is generated in huge volume with high velocity and variety. Big Data and technology are reshaping our life and business. Our research inevitably needs to catch up with these changes. In this short essay, we focus on two aspects of supply chain management, namely, demand management and manufacturing. We feel that, while rapidly growing research on these two areas is contributed by scholars in computer science and engineering, the developments made by production and operations management society have been insufficient. We believe that our field has the expertise and talent to push for advancements in the theory and practice of demand management and manufacturing (of course, among many other areas) along unique dimensions. We summarize some relevant concepts emerged with Big Data and present several prototype models to demonstrate how these concepts can lead to rethinking of our research. Our intention is to generate interests and guide directions for new research in production and operations management in the era of Big Data.

This paper examines an integrated decision-making process regarding pricing for uncertain demand and sourcing from uncertain supply, which are often studied separately in the literature. Our analysis of the integrated system suggests that the base stock list price policy fails to achieve optimality even under deterministic demand. Instead, the optimal policy is characterized by two critical values: a reorder point and a target safety stock. Under this policy, a positive order is issued if and only if the inventory level is below the reorder point. When this happens, the optimal order and price are coordinated to achieve a constant target safety stock, which aims at hedging the demand uncertainty. We further investigate the profit improvement obtained from deploying dynamic pricing, as opposed to static pricing. Our results indicate that either supply limit or supply uncertainty may induce a significant benefit from dynamic pricing, and the compound effect of supply limit and uncertainty can be much more pronounced than the individual effects. Whether or not the supply capacity is limited has a major implication on the value of dynamic pricing. Under unlimited supply, dynamic pricing is more valuable when procurement cost is high or when demand is more sensitive to price. With limited supply, however, the capacity restriction tends to be relaxed, reducing the value of dynamic pricing.inventory, stochastic, policies, pricing

W e analyze contracting behaviors in a two-tier supply chain system consisting of competing manufacturers and competing retailers. We contrast the contracting outcome of a Stackelberg game, in which the manufacturers offer take-itor-leave-it contracts to the retailers, with that of a bargaining game, in which the firms bilaterally negotiate contract terms via a process of alternating offers. The manufacturers in the Stackelberg game possess a Stackelberg-leader advantage in that the retailers are not entitled to make counteroffers. Our analysis suggests that whether this advantage would benefit the manufacturers depends on the contractual form. With simple contracts such as wholesale-price contracts, which generally do not allow one party to fully extract the trade surplus, the Stackelberg game replicates the boundary case of the bargaining game with the manufacturers possessing all the bargaining power. In contrast, with sophisticated contracts such as two-part tariffs, which enable full surplus extraction, the two games lead to distinct outcomes. We further show that the game structure being Stackelberg or bargaining critically affects firms' preferences over contract types and thus their equilibrium contract choices. These observations suggest that the Stackelberg game may not be a sufficient device to predict contracting behaviors in reality where bargaining is commonly observed.