ABSTRACT

Production cost affects heavily supply chain coordination, but it is uncertain in many cases. We consider a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer, where the unit production cost is uncertain when the firms sign a procurement contract. We derive the optimal decisions and profits for the centralised and decentralised cases. We show that production cost uncertainty exaggerates the supply chain’s incentive conflict, but may increase the expected profit in the centralised decision case. Then we design an incomplete contract, which sets a wholesale price and an order quantity in the first stage, which the firms can re-negotiate after the production cost is realised in the second stage. We prove that such an incomplete contract can lead to the first best outcome. We further consider the case with asymmetric cost information and show that the incomplete contract can also coordinate the supply chain. Furthermore, we discuss how the degree of contract incompleteness, re-negotiation freedom, and residual control rights affect the supply chain performance. The results reveal that the hold-up problem is prone to occur with improper contract incompleteness, re-negotiation freedom, and residual control rights, while the incomplete contract we propose can effectively avoid the problem.

摘要

生产成本严重影响供应链协调，但在许多情况下是不确定的。我们考虑一个由制造商和零售商组成的供应链，当公司签订采购合同时，单位生产成本是不确定的。我们为集中式和分散式案例得出最佳决策和利润。我们表明，生产成本的不确定性夸大了供应链的激励冲突，但可能会增加集中决策情况下的预期利润。然后我们设计了一个不完全合同，在第一阶段设定批发价格和订购数量，在第二阶段实现生产成本后，企业可以重新协商。我们证明了这样一个不完整的契约可以导致最好的结果。我们进一步考虑了成本信息不对称的情况，表明不完全合同也可以协调供应链。此外，我们还讨论了合同不完备程度、重新谈判自由度和剩余控制权如何影响供应链绩效。结果表明，不完备的合同不完全性、重新谈判自由和剩余控制权容易出现托付问题，而我们提出的不完全合同可以有效避免该问题。