Inventory control in a decentralised two-stage make-to-stock queueing system

In an Enterprise network, several companies interact to produce families of goods. Each member company seeks to optimize his own production and inventory policy to maximize his profit. These objectives are generally antagonistic and can lead to contradictory choices in the context of a network with a high degree of local decisional autonomy. To avoid a global loss of economic efficiency, the network should be equipped with a coordination mechanism. The present paper describes a coordination contract negotiated between a manufacturer and a supplier. The purpose of the negotiation is to determine the price of the supplied intermediate goods and the delay penalty in case of a late delivery. For a manufacturer with a dominant contracting position, the outcome of the negotiation can be computed as a Stackelberg equilibrium point. Under the resulting contract, the two-stage supply chain reaches globally optimal running conditions with the maximal possible profit obtained by the manufacturer and the smallest acceptable profit obtained by the supplier.