Coordination for a Closed-loop Supply Chain with Recycling Platform Considering Dynamic Setting

Agriculture sector plays very crucial role in the economic growth of India. For sustaining its further growth, supply chain of agriculture sector needs to be strengthened. Agriculture sector is facing lot of challenges due to poor infrastructure, unorganised retail market, poor adoption of modern technology and overall inefficient supply chain. There is strong need to develop linkages between farmers and food processors and markets. Lack of coordination is the major problem in food supply chain. It is causing major loss to country as a whole. This study has tried to identify major factors responsible for coordination in the food supply chain. Further, a framework has been developed to quantify the effectiveness of coordination in the supply chain. This has been further illustrated with a case of food supply chain. This framework can be also useful for supply chains from other sectors to quantify its effectiveness and further improve their respective performance.

In the Big Data environment, aims of enterprises investing in Big Data are to gain Big Data information (BDI). To study the decision-making issues of BDI investment and its effects on supply chain coordination, a supply chain with one retailer and one manufacturer was chosen. Meanwhile, considering a company owned the internal BDI and the external BDI, the market demand function was revised and four decision models were proposed from a new perspective. Then, the effects of BDI investment on supply chain members’ benefits under the four models were analyzed and an effectively coordination tactic was presented for achieving supply chain coordination. Results indicated when the investment cost could face a certain threshold, the retailer or the manufacturer investing in BDI could increase its benefits. Meanwhile, there existed “positive externalities” for other supply chain members. In addition, after supply chain members investing in BDI together, revenue-sharing contract could coordinate the supply chain effectively. This article provided a theoretical guidance or a decision basis for companies investing in BDI, meanwhile, it had reference values for supply chain coordination after investing in BDI.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the strategy development by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for improving coordination in supply chain in Indian perspective. Globalization and liberalization of the world economy has leveled the field for all competitors around the globe. To face global competition successfully, SMEs have to break isolation of their suppliers and other entities in the supply chain. Design/methodology/approach – For collecting data, a question-based survey was conducted. In total, 251 valid responses were received. Statistical analysis of data acquired from survey is done by one sample t-test, correlation and regression analysis. Findings – Uncertainty of customer order/demand, insufficient knowledge of supply chain management (SCM) and involvement of middlemen in supply chain are the main problems faced by Indian SMEs during implementation of SCM. Quality improvements, delivery on time and cost reduction are the major priorities while forming supply chain strategies. Coordination strategies are positively correlated with business performances. Research limitations/implications – Major implication is that SMEs should develop their strategies effectively after analyzing business environment and future plans. While developing strategies for improving coordination in supply chain of SMEs, they should give due importance to problems and risks they face. However, it is felt that this study can be further explored by considering other aspects of strategy development such as human resource, organization culture, etc. Originality/value – Finding and issues of the paper will be highly useful for SMEs in framing their strategies for improving coordination in supply chain, and academia for further research in the context of changing market scenario.

This chapter explores novel ways of improving flexibility, responsiveness, and competitiveness via strategic information technology (IT) alliances among channel members in a supply chain network. To gain competitiveness, firms have to constantly update their operational strategies and information technologies through collaborative efforts of a “network” of supply chain members rather than the efforts of an individual firm. In sum, the foci of this chapter are: (1) an overview of supply chain management (SCM) issues and problems, (2) supply chain coordination and integration, (3) the latest IT applications for improved supply chain performance and coordination, and (4) strategic IT alliances. This chapter concludes with a discussion of business implications and recommendations of future research.

In recent years, research on supply chain coordination (SCC) with risk‐averse agents has received much attention. Previous studies are primarily concerned with the coordination of a single manufacturer–single retailer supply chain using different definitions of SCC. What is lacking is a comprehensive analysis of the achievability of SCC. In this paper, we provide a systematic analysis of SCC with risk‐averse agents. We see that three definitions of SCC have been proposed in the literature to investigate SCC with risk‐averse agents, among which the one based on Pareto optimality (PO) stands out. Here we explore the challenges of using the PO criterion. Specifically, we first examine the standard two‐agent supply chain under the mean–variance (MV) and mean‐downside‐risk (MDR) objectives. What we find is that the achievability of PO depends on the contract type. The wholesale price contract even with a side payment may not lead to PO. Also, unlike under MV where risk sharing is Pareto optimal, we observe that the least risk‐averse agent must take all the risk to achieve SCC under MDR. Importantly, we extend our analysis to multiretailer, multimanufacturer, and multitier supply chains. In each case, we characterize the efficient Pareto‐optimal manifold in the multidimensional space and design coordinating contracts that result in Pareto‐optimal actions acceptable to all agents. We also discover that identifying PO across all the contract forms is difficult when some other risk‐aversion criteria are considered. We conclude by providing suggestions and methods for SCC when we are unable to identify PO.

A novel perspective on closed-loop supply chain coordination: Product life-cycle approach

For a closed-loop power battery supply chain composed of a power battery manufacturer and a complete vehicle enterprise, considering that the level of recycling service will affect the demand of the recycling market, this paper analyzes the impact of factors such as recycling cost coefficient on the optimal decision by constructing a centralized and decentralized closed-loop supply chain decision model, and examines the optimal choices within both centralized and decentralized decision-making frameworks. On this basis, a “revenue sharing” contract is designed. Finally, a numerical example is used to investigate and verify. It is found that the increase of recycling service cost will affect the earnings of manufacturers and vehicle companies, and then affect their decisions. The coordination and Pareto improvement of power battery closed-loop supply chain can be achieved by reasonably designing the range of revenue sharing contract parameters.

A scientific and reasonable model for military supply chain coordination with contracts can effectively reduce the overall cost of the supply chain, increase the profits of supply chain members, achieve supply chain coordination, and balance the interests of all relevant parties. Aiming at the military supply chain coordination with contracts under normal order demand, this paper first explains the concept and main characteristics of the military supply chain, defines the concept of supply chain coordination, analyzes the supply chain coordination mechanism, and puts forward the hypotheses of modeling. Based on the bi-level programming theory, the minimum total cost of military enterprises and maximum profit of manufacturers are further taken as the objectives of the upper and lower levels, and such factors as cost of means of production, ordering cost of parts, inventory cost, cost of late delivery and penalty cost are taken into account in this paper. On this basis, a bi-level programming model for military supply chain coordination with contracts is built. The model is then solved by hierarchical particle swarm optimization (HPSO), and specific operation steps are given. Finally, the model is verified in terms of rationality and feasibility through case analysis.

The importance of reverse supply chain has been widely recognized in past two decades. Many companies use it in order to repair, replace, reuse and recycle their used products. On the other hand, due to independence of the decisions of the members in supply chain, the coordination mechanisms like contracts, can increase profit and improve decision making in supply chain, especially when information is asymmetric and each member has confidential information. In this paper, a three-echelon closed-loop supply chain including one manufacturer, one-third party and one retailer is developed. First, we survey Stackelberg games with sales-effort dependent demand and investigate supply chain performance under the centralized and decentralized scenarios. Next, three types of contract in supply chain including two parts tariff, cost-sharing and also revenue-cost sharing are analyzed and compared under asymmetric and symmetric information. We conclude that the supply chain can be coordinated under two parts tariff and revenue-cost sharing contracts when symmetric information exists, while supply chain coordination may not be achieved under asymmetric information. Finally, we proposed numerical examples and results show that revenue-cost sharing and two parts tariff have better performances.

The theory of the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) in financial risk management is considered in this paper to develop a model of supply chain coordination with a wholesale pricing policy. The proposed model solves the drawbacks of objective function in current supply chain coordination model. A numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The following helpful conclusions are drawn from the paper: with the increase of the degree of risk averting for supply chain individual member, the optimal order quantity of supply chain is decreasing, while the optimal profit is decreasing; If supplier’s risk averting degree increases, supplier has to increase wholesale price to achieve supply chain coordination; If retailer’s risk averting degree increases, supplier has to decrease wholesale price to achieve supply chain coordination.

In this study, we conduct a comprehensive literature review on the inventory and pricing decisions under the supply chain coordination. To be specific, we review the publications from 1997 to 2017 and divide the papers into six areas for discussion, they are: decisions under integrated supply chain, supply contract, capital-constrained, competition, risk aversion, and information asymmetry. After reviewing the literature, we identify three major future research directions. First, we propose to explore different real world industrial supply contracts and the forms of demand function. Second, limited studies consider risk aversion behaviour of the supply chain members; hence, we also propose to examine the inventory and pricing decisions under supply chain coordination with risk-averse retailer and risk-averse supplier, respectively. Finally, it is also interesting to investigate different types of information asymmetry.

Purpose: A critical issue has been absent from the conversation on supply chain coordination: how supply chain coordination influence the enterprise performance. This research proposes a new vision to research the performance mechanism of supply chain coordination capability as a dynamic capability. Manufacturing capabilities are existed as mediating role. Design/methodology/approach: Data from International Manufacturing Strategy Survey in 2009 is used to verify the mediating model by hierarchical regression analysis. Findings: The results show that supply chain coordination impacts the enterprise performance positively and indirect impacts the enterprise performance through quality, cost, flexibility. Research implications: This study presents an overview of the impact of supply chain coordination and manufacturing capabilities on enterprise performance, giving grasp for further research of the relationships that exist between them. Originality/value: This finding integrates insights from previous research in dynamic capability framework and supply chain management into a generalization and extension of the performance mechanism in manufacturing enterprises.

This paper performs a literature review research of value configuration analysis (VCA) and its application in supply chain coordination. By reviewing the theory of VCA and its application in supply chain management, it analyzes theoretical and managerial implications for supply chain coordination based on in-depth exploring the range of the VCA theory. By so doing, it concludes that the dynamic capabilities, the interfaces, and the appropriate governance mechanisms concerning VCA are interesting insights in supply chain coordination.

Based on the concept and requirements of supply chain management in manufacturing enterprises, this paper emphasizes the importance of coordination in supply chain and introduces relative researches. On the basis of the multi-agent theory and its analysis method in distributed artificial intelligence, the paper presents a supply chain management framework, defines the agents' functions and responsibility and studies the contents, features and solutions of coordinated supply chain. Finally, the paper presents the software architecture to develop a coordination environment based on CORBA and KQML protocols.

On the base of the assumption that the recycled quantity of used products is affected by the interaction of recycling price and sales volume, this paper researches closed-loop supply chain's pricing and coordination, gives system members' optimal pricing and profits in decentralized decision and centralized decision and finds that reverse supply chain itself is in coordination and traditional forward supply chain is in incoordiantion under decentralized decision. Then it designs a revenue sharing contract which can coordinate closed-loop supply chain. At last, a numerical example is given to verify the conclusions drew in this paper.