Browsing by Subject "Delivery of goods--Management."

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Open Access
Essays on non-cooperative inventory games
(2012) Körpeoğlu, Evren
In this thesis we study different non–cooperative inventory games. In particular, we focus on joint replenishment games and newsvendor duopoly under asymmetric information. Chapter 1 contains introduction and motivation behind the research. Chapter 2 is a preliminary chapter which introduce basic concepts used in the thesis such as Nash equilibrium, Bayesian Nash equilibrium and mechanism design. In Chapter 3, we study a non-cooperative game for joint replenishment of multiple firms that operate under an EOQ–like setting. Each firm decides whether to replenish independently or to participate in joint replenishment, and how much to contribute to joint ordering costs in case of participation. Joint replenishment cycle time is set by an intermediary as the lowest cycle time that can be financed with the private contributions of participating firms. We consider two variants of the participation-contribution game: in the single–stage variant, participation and contribution decisions are made simultaneously, and, in the two-stage variant, participating firms become common knowledge at the contribution stage. We characterize the behavior and outcomes under undominated Nash equilibria for the one-stage game and subgame-perfect equilibrium for the two-stage game. In Chapter 4, we extend the private contributions game to an asymmetric information counterpart. We assume each firm only knows the probability distribution of the other firms’ adjusted demand rates (demand rate multiplied by inventory holding cost rate). We show the existence of a pure strategy Bayesian Nash equilibrium for the asymmetric information game and provide its characterization. Finally, we conduct some numerical study to examine the impact of information asymmetry on expected and interim values of total contributions, cycle times and total costs. quantities for all firm types except the type that has the highest possible unit cost, who orders the same quantity as he would as a monopolist newsboy. Consequently, competition leads to higher total inventory in the industry. A firm’s equilibrium order quantity increases with a stochastic increase in the total industry demand or with an increase in his initial allocation of the total industry demand. Finally, we provide full characterization of the equilibrium, corresponding payoffs and comparative statics for a parametric special case with uniform demand and linear market shares.
Open Access
Financial valuation of flexible supply chain contracts
(2008) Erön, Ali Gökay
We consider a single buyer - single supplier multiple period quantity flexibility contract in which the buyer has options to buy in case of a higher than expected demand in addition to the committed purchases at the beginning of each period of the contract. We take the buyer’s point of view and find the maximum value of the contract for the buyer by analyzing the financial and real markets simultaneously. We assume both markets evolve as discrete scenario trees. Furthermore, under the assumption that the demand of the item correlates perfectly with the price of the risky security we present a model to find the buyer’s maximum acceptable price of the contract. Applying duality, we develop sufficient conditions on some parameters to decrease the value of the contract. Then, an experimental study is presented to illustrate the impacts of all the parameters on the value of the contract and the option. We show that the model can also be extended to the case of partially correlated demand and the risky asset price under the assumption that the markets evolve as binomial trees. Finally, we apply duality and perform numerical analysis for the latter assumption.
Open Access
Integration of production, transportation and inventory decisions in supply chains
(2012) Koç, Utku
This dissertation studies the integration of production, transportation and inventory decisions in supply chains, while utilizing the same vehicles in the inbound and outbound. The details of integration is studied in two levels: operational and tactical. In the first part of the thesis, we provide an operational level model for coordination of production and shipment schedules in a single stage supply chain. The production scheduling problem at the facility is modelled as belonging to a single process. Jobs that are located at a distant origin are carried to this facility making use of a finite number of capacitated vehicles. These vehicles, which are initially stationed close to the origin, are also used for the return of the jobs upon completion of their processing. In the first part, a model is developed to find the schedules of the facility and the vehicles jointly, allowing effective utilization of the vehicles for both in the inbound and outbound transportation. In the second part of the dissertation, we provide a tactical level model and study a manufacturer’s production planning and outbound transportation problem with production capacities to minimize transportation and inventory holding costs. The manufacturer in this setting can use two vehicle types for outbound shipments. The first type of vehicle is available in unlimited number. The availability of the second type, which is less expensive, changes over time. For each possible combination of operating policies affecting the problem structure, we either provide a pseudo-polynomial algorithm for general cost structure or prove that no such algorithm exists even for linear cost structure. We develop general optimality properties, propose a generic model formulation that is valid for all problems and evaluate the effects of the operating policies on the system performance. The third part of the dissertation considers one of the problems defined in the second part in detail. Motivated by some industry practices, we present formulations for three different solution approaches, which we refer to as the uncoordinated solution, the hierarchically-coordinated solution and the centrallycoordinated solution. These approaches vary in how the underlying production and transportation subproblems are solved, i.e., sequentially versus jointly, or, heuristically versus optimally. We provide intractability proofs or polynomialtime exact solution procedures for the subproblems and their special cases. We also compare the three solution approaches to quantify the savings due to integration and explicit consideration of transportation availabilities.
Open Access
Supply chain coordination with different objectives
(2013) Haliloğlu, Emre
In a typical supply chain, each party tries to optimize his/her own objective that causes the poor total supply chain performance. By contracting on a set of transfer payments, each firm’s objectives become aligned with the supply chain’s objective, which is called coordination; hence the optimal result for the supply chain can be achieved. In the literature, common treatment to supply chain coordination for the newsboy problem is to analyze the system under the assumption that the objectives’ of the parties are expected profit maximization, however the real life observations show that this might not be the case. Hence, this assumption is relaxed and the supply chain coordination is studied when the objectives’ of the parties are different than the expected profit maximization, which are probability maximization of reaching a target profit, expected return on investment maximization and the probability maximization of reaching a target return on investment under the wholesale price, buy back and the revenue sharing contracts. This thesis reveals that under the assumption of compliance, the coordination is possible for some contract types and the objectives if some conditions are satisfied, however some contracts cannot coordinate the channel for some objectives no matter what the conditions are.