Coordination And Pricing For Relief Supply Chain

The global have been suffering various natural and man-made disasters frequently in last two decades. These disasters greatly undermine the victims’livelihood and social stability. In this background, the number of victim increases and the demand for relief material soars. To satisfy the rapid raised demand effectively and efficiently and maintain the social stability, the management level of relief material has to be improved. In this paper, we consider the buyer (government administration or non-profit organization) and the supplier (retailer or manufactory) of the relief material as a supply chain, to control, analyze and predict the flow of material and capital from the perspective of supply chain coordination. This research provides a new perspective and entry point on relief material management.Current research in relief material management focuses on linear programming based inventory optimization and graph theory based warehouse location management. However, the problem that relates to impact of relationship between relief material supply chain members to their revenue and cost is lack of systematical research. This paper focuses on the relief material supply chain. By considering the special characteristics of relief material and relief material supply chain, several commonly used management strategies and coordination contracts of relief material are modeled, analyzed and compared. Based on these analysis and comparison, we design the relief material management strategies with one or two delivery steps and build corresponding contract pricing to reduce the cost and capital occupation. Moreover, the paper designs a dynamic demand and satisfaction model of relief material by taking into account of changing pattern of relief demand. This model is useful to help build the performance measurement system of relief activity.The organization of the thesis is as follows:The first chapter introduces the background and the meaning of this research, reviews the previous researches and literature in relief material management and supply chain coordination. The purpose and main content of this research are described at the end of this chapter.In Chapter2, the special characteristics of relief material management are analyzed. They are compared with that of commercial material management in three processes: acquisition, storage and distribution. The differences are summarized. Besides, the differences between relief material supply chain and commercial supply chain are also analyzed, as well as their performance measurement.In Chapter3, by comparing commonly used management strategies and purchasing methods, we build an option contract coordination model of relief material. The research gives out the condition under which option contract can coordinate the relief material supply chain and achieve Pareto-improvement as well. Moreover, by take into account the risk level and risk performance, we build a Nash bargaining model to study the problem of profit distribution between members of relief material supply chain.In Chapter4, based on Black-Scholes option pricing model, an option contract pricing model of relief material supply chain with one-time delivery method is build. Various parameters which have impact on contract price are analyzed.In Chapter5, to further develop the model proposed in the previous chapter, we design an option contract with two delivery steps and build corresponding option pricing model with binominal lattice. The research demonstrates that, with two delivery steps, there is a feasible price range of option contract which makes both members of relief material supply chain profitable and willing to conduct the transaction with option contract.In Chapter6, by taking into account of demand proliferation phenomenon in disaster relief, the dynamic demand and satisfaction models of relief material are built. The properties of these models are demonstrated and explained from analytic perspective.The last chapter summarizes all works of this thesis and proposes several useful suggestions for further research in relief material management.The innovations and contributions of this thesis are briefly summarized as follows:(1) Several commonly used management strategies and purchasing methods are modeled, analyzed and compared. A model of purchasing from manufactory with option contract is build to coordinate the relief material supply chain to achieve the Pareto-improvement. Moreover, by take into account the risk level and risk performance, we propose an alternative Nash-bargaining model to identify the profit distribution between members of relief material supply chain.(2) Option pricing models of relief material supply chain with one-time delivery and two steps delivery are built. These models demonstrate that option contract can reduce the inventory cost and capital occupation of relief material supply chain without affecting the gross supply amount and profitability.(3) By considering the unique demand proliferation phenomenon, a quantifiable dynamic demand and satisfaction model of relief material is build to analyze the relationship between the decision variables and the outputs. The common and unique properties of this model are proposed as well as their management significant.