Research On The Several Business Operation Modes Of Internet-enabled Supply Chain

Internet-enabled technology used to business thoroughly disrupts the link between information-intensive selling process and inventory-managing physical process. It is greatly cost-efficient to transfer and process the supply-demand information and product information through Internet. The traditional mode of supply chain operations is radically destroyed by the utilization of Internet to modern business. As a result, most of the operation strategies and coordination mechanisms for traditional supply chain are not efficient or adapted to Internet-enabled supply chain. To explore operation strategies and mechanisms for improving and coordinating Internet-enabled supply chain is one of imperative problems in the area of ecommerce and supply chain management. The solutions to the problems not only enrich the current conclusions of the area but also provide useful suggestions to the practitioners of ecommerce and supply chain management.Based on diverse matching modes of order-placing points and order-fulfilling points in Internet-enabled business environment, this dissertation studies some specific operation modes of Internet-enabled supply chain and gets some useful conclusions. In the dissertation, some mathematical models are constructed by utilizing programming and optimization methods after many documents are reviewed. Then, the conclusions from the models are tested by numeric experiments and computer simulations. The primary conclusions are as follows.(1) The strategy of centralized ordering combined with dynamic pricing is proposed by solving after modeling and is demonstrated to improve drop shipping supply chain. In drop-shipping supply chain, the retailer can reduce unit transportation cost and expand market by the strategy that need not invest in storefront and inventory. The retailer provides service not only for customers who select drop shipping but also for that who select placing order and waiting for the arrival of the retailer's centralized order goods. The retailer collects customer orders through his website and gives different customer different discount amount.(2) Under the condition of inventory risk shared by a retailer with his supplier, the profit-maximizing models of them are constructed and the contracts about the chain designed. The combination of drop shipping markup contract and traditional wholesale price contract does not coordinate the drop-shipping supply chain, but the combination of drop shipping markup contract and traditional buyback contract, the combination of stock-selling income sharing contract and drop shipping markup contract, and the combination of various income sharing contracts in stock-selling and drop shipping does. In an effectively-coordinated contract, the parameters must be adjusted simultaneously.(3) In multiple-channel distribution system, demand referral performed by a supplier has effect on her inventory decision but not on her retailer. Well-designed solution to demand referral decreases the level of base stock with the result that the performance of the supply chain is improved. When the supply chain is centralized, demand referral has no impact on the level of base stock in supplier online channel. When the supply chain is decentralized, demand referral and customer's channel option both influence the level of base stock in supplier online channel. The game of Inventory competition between the retailer channel and the supplier online channel has a unique total Nash equilibrium when some conditions are satisfied.(4) Ther cost models influenced by customer factors in BTO supply chain are contructed. Two conclusions are resulted from the cost models that consider customer factor. One is that the optimal strategy of outsourcing base product is equal distance in base product specifications and equal distance fractile when the product ordered can be transformed from one with bigger or higher specification and the variable of customer demand follows a uniform distribution; the other is that production cost decreases and customer satisfaction increases in the level of customer maturity. To sum up, based on various matching of order-placing points and order-fulfilling points in Internet-enabled supply chain, some questions are proposed , then some hypotheses suggested and some propositions are concluded. Except these in the study, other measures to improve drop-shipping supply chain or coordination contracts may be investigated, and more cost models of BTO supply chain may be constructed by considering more than one customer factor, from which more efficient operation strategies for the supply chain may be found. These are worth for further investigation.