Research On Strategic Alliance Of Supply Chain Based On Mass Customization

With the fast development of modern science and intensive competition in themarket, the demands of customers are becoming more and more diverse and individual,and this situation is promoting the change that the competitive focus among enterprisesis concentrated on how to satisfy customers' individual demands. Mass Customization,represented as MC for short, emerges as the times require under this background.Confronted with the change of production mode, traditional managementmethodologies for strategic alliances of supply chain can't satisfy the competitiondemands. Therefore, new thoughts, theories and methodologies must be introducedinto the management of strategic alliances of supply chain under MC mode. This paperexpands researches based on these. Firstly, this paper reviews the development processof theories & methodologies applied to SCM, and then analyzes the background andideological connotations of MC. Secondly, this paper systematically analyzes theresearches on strategic alliances of supply chain, including putting forward aintegration framework for relative theory and analyzing the internal relationshipsbetween different research viewpoints. Finally, this paper mainly makes researches onthe most important and complex problems in this filed, those are the problem ofstrategies for select strategic alliances of supply chain, the problem of supply chaincost, the problem of assembles to order system and the problem of supply chaincontracts.The most significant results and innovations are as follows:Firstly, from the point of view that changing the management thinking, this papermakes research on the characteristics and operational model of supply chain based onMC. To be more detailed, in this paper supply chain is viewed as a managementmethodology system instead of an operational management tool. So this research is ofgreat theoretical height.Secondly, this paper analyzes the principle laws and virtue as well as flaw of theviewpoints of different schools based on review of these theories. Then this paperexpounds an integrated viewpoint based on value and risk and argue that the formingof strategic alliance of supply chain is a result of firms' pursuing the maximum ofutility, which mainly lie on value and risk. That is to say, strategic alliance of supplychain provides a chance for value-creating and also service as a mechanism oftransforming performance risk to cooperative risk so as to offer the firms a choice ofmaximizing the utility. So it is of theoretical innovation. Furthermore, this paperanalyzes the influence factors of selecting strategic alliance and of selecting specificform the aspects of microcosm and macrocosm. It is thus of practical innovation.Thirdly, this paper makes research on supply chain cost under MC mode. Based onthe classical model of Reorder Point and Order Quantity (for short (S, Q) model) putforward by R.Ganeshan, this paper uses stochastic process to research the sole-dualsupplier problem under MC, and makes hypothesis on supplier delivery and the courseof users order goods under the mode of e-business trade. This paper proposes the costmodel of sole-dual supplier's situation under e-business, and analyzes the solvingscheme in detail. Therefore, such researches have not only established (t,S) modelbased on stochastic lead-time, but also provided a foundation for further research onsupply chain cost problem based on MC.Fourthly, this paper establishes an easily implementable dynamic control policyfor Assemble-to-Order system to sequence product orders for assembly and expeditingcomponents. This paper considers a high-volume assemble-to-order system withmultiple products and components in which component production can be expedited atsome additional cost. The objective is to maximize expected discounted profit subjectto assembling orders within a guaranteed maximum lead-time. This paper hypothesizesthat optimal product pricing and component production balances customer demandwith component supply, meaning the system is in heavy traffic. In this regime, thesystem exhibits a reduction in problem dimensionality. In particular, the limitingdiffusion approximation has dimension equal to the number of components (rather thanthe number of components plus the number of products). This paper finishes byrecommending a non-base stock inventory policy which accounts for dependenciesamongst components and is based on the solution to a singular diffusion controlproblem.Finally, this paper makes research on the optimal profit model and the value ofinformation to form supply chain contract based on MC. This paper studies the value toa supplier of obtaining better information about a buyer's cost structure and the valueof being able to offer more flexible contracts. Specially, this paper uses the basicbilateral monopoly setting to analyze six scenarios: three types of contracts (simplewholesale pricing schemes, two-part linear schemes, and two-part nonlinear schemes)and two different settings in which the supplier has either full or incompleteinformation about the buyer's cost structure. In contrast to most existing work thatassumes that the supplier must trade with the buyer, this paper explicitly includes areservation profit level for the supplier below which he will refuse to trade with thebuyer. Based on these, this paper derives the supplier's optimal contracts and profitsfor all six scenarios and uses these results to evaluate the value of information and thevalue of contracting flexibility. The key findings of our analysis are: first, the value ofinformation is higher under two-part contracts;second, the value of offering two-partcontracts is higher under full information;and third, more flexible contracts allow thesupplier to trade with buyers with higher costs.