We study supply chains where multiple suppliers sell to multiple retailers through a wholesale market. In practice, we often observe that both suppliers and retailers tend to influence the wholesale market price that retailers pay to suppliers. However, existing models of supply chain competition do not capture retailers’ influence on the wholesale price (i.e., buyer power) and show that the wholesale price and the order quantity per retailer do not change with the number of retailers. To overcome this limitation, we develop a competition model based on the market game mechanism in which the wholesale price is determined based on both suppliers’ and retailers’ decisions. When taking into account retailers’ buyer power, we obtain the result that is consistent with the observed practice: As the number of retailers increases, each retailer’s buyer power decreases, and each retailer is willing to pay more for her order, so the wholesale price increases. In this case, supply chain expansion to include more retailers (or suppliers) turns out to be more beneficial in terms of supply chain efficiency than what the prior literature shows without considering buyer power. Finally, we analyze the integration of two local supply chains and show that although the profit of the integrated supply chain is greater than the sum of total profits of local supply chains, integration may reduce the total profit of firms in a retailer-oriented supply chain that has more retailers than suppliers. This paper was accepted by Charles Corbett, operations management.
In this study, the corrosion behavior of new Ni-based structural materials was studied for electrolytic reduction after exposure to LiCl-Li2O molten salt at 650°C for 24-216h under an oxidizing atmosphere. The new alloys with Ni, Cr, Al, Si, and Nb as the major components were melted at 1700°C under inert atmosphere. The corrosion products and fine structures of the corroded specimens were characterized by SEM, EDS, and XRD. The corrosion rate of 12wt% Cr-2wt% Si alloys and 12wt% Cr-5wt% Si alloys are below 0.3mm/year. However, the corrosion rate of 20wt% Cr-5wt% Si is 0.6mm/year. Also, the corrosion products of 12wt% Cr alloys were Cr2O3, NiCr2O4, Ni, and NiO; those of 20wt% Cr alloys were Cr2O3, LiAl2Cr3O8, and NiO. The higher corrosion rate of 20wt% Cr-5wt% Si could be the higher solute concentration which leads to an unstable alloy formation. As confirmed by the pseudo binary phase diagram of (Ni-Cr-Al-Nb)-Si, the solubility of the silicon with 20 wt% of Cr decreased to 4 wt% from 5 wt% with 12 wt% of Cr.
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