Supply chain coordination with supplier-facilitated transshipments

Rong Li, Jennifer K. Ryan, Zhi Zeng

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the role of inventory transshipment for achieving supply chain coordination in a multi-retailer distribution system. The previous transshipment literature focuses on coordination via retailer-negotiated transshipments, which requires a certain degree of cooperation among the independent retailers. We find that to achieve coordination in a system with non-cooperative retailers, including the supplier in the transshipment system is critical. We thus propose and examine a new coordination scheme: supplier-facilitated transshipments. We study a two-period production and inventory distribution problem in which transshipments among the retailers occur at the start of second period. These transshipments are implemented through a bi-directional adjustment contract, offered by the supplier to each retailer. Under this contract, in the second period, each retailer can buy additional inventory from the supplier or sell back excess inventory to the supplier. We show that a properly designed adjustment contract, along with a wholesale price contract with appropriately chosen price, can be used to achieve coordination.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages875-884
Number of pages10
StatePublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event62nd IIE Annual Conference and Expo 2012 - Orlando, FL, United States
Duration: May 19 2012May 23 2012

Other

Other62nd IIE Annual Conference and Expo 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityOrlando, FL
Period5/19/125/23/12

Keywords

  • Inventory management
  • Supply chain coordination
  • Transshipment

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Supply chain coordination with supplier-facilitated transshipments'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this