We study a class of two echelon, serial systems with identical ordering capacities or limits for both echelons. For the case where the lead time to the upstream echelon is one period, the optimality of state-dependent, modified echelon base-stock policies is proved using a decomposition approach. For the case where the upstream lead time is two periods, we introduce a new class of policies call...

Although adequate management of relationships is often considered a key factor in Supply Chain Management, the use of formal contracts in this context has still been little studied or reported, even in the automotive industry. This article discuss the major findings of a study conducted in a representative supply chain of the auto industry to verify the use of contracts and how they affect the ...

Supplier base management is an important strategy for managing today’s global, customer driven supply chains. Successful supplier base management can effectively handle supply side exceptions, which may have significant business implications. The goal of this research is to present a clustering algorithm, named Max-Max-Roughness (MMR) to cluster suppliers into manageable smaller groups with sim...

IT-outsourcing supplier evaluation and selection is a dynamic and complex multi-objective decision-making problem. In order to quantitatively evaluate IT-outsourcing suppliers, a supplier evaluation index system and comprehensive supplier evaluation model was established based on combination weighting and double base points method. In this model, qualitative sorting was obtained by the combinat...

D espite the spread of cost-driven outsourcing practices, academic research cautions that suppliers’ cost advantage may weaken manufacturers’ bargaining positions in negotiating outsourcing agreements, thereby hurting their profitability. In this study, we attempt to further understand the strategic impact of low-cost outsourcing on manufacturers’ profitability by investigating the contractual ...

Abstract We analyze the quality risk and outsourcing strategies in a three-tier low-carbon supply chain comprising an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), contract (CM) supplier under two competitive scenarios. The following that are currently implemented by OEM considered: consignment turnkey. Under strategy, procures components from then outsources product manufacturing to CM. turnkey compo...

In Complex Product Development (CPD) project, enterprises gather suppliers distributed in time, space under the thought of lean product development. However, increasing number of globally distributed project teams bring with great challenges for virtual projects to arrive at high levels of collaboration. This paper presents a Collaborative Project Management (CPM) framework that aims at improvi...

Development of Gasoline Engine Management Systems control features Tata Consultancy Services in alliance with a leading Tier-1 supplier has developed control and diagnostic features to be implemented for a Gasoline Engine Management System (EMS) that will be used in a passenger car that meets EU4 emission norms. From the high level requirements provided by the Tier-1 , the control features deve...

We analyze the incentives for cost-reducing R&D by downstream firms in a two-tier market structure. Downstream R&D increases the demand for an input, thereby allowing the upstream firm to raise the input price. While it lowers the benefit of R&D to a downstream firm, such a price adjustment by the input supplier leads to a higher production cost for all rival firms. Due to this “raising rivals’...