Study On Decision-making Of Promised Delivery Date In MTO Supply Chain

With the development of science and technology, the product life cycle becomes shorter. Furthermore, along with the improvement of people’s living standard, the diversified and individualized demand of customers becomes more prominent. To adapt to these changes, most enterprises shift from the traditional make-to-stock production model to make-to-order (MTO) production model and establish MTO supply chain. For the MTO supply chain, promising a reasonable delivery date is the key to its survival and development, so this issue has caused widespread concern of the business community and academia.A complete supply chain system should include two parts, the external supply chain and the internal supply chain. For the external supply chain, the promising delivery date and price is the key to profit-making for each firm in the supply chain. Playing as an independent interest group, each firm makes decisions respectively on their own interests. For the internal supply chain, capacity of the firm directly affects the promised delivery date, so promised delivery date, price and capacity, all of these three factors should be considered during its operations. Promised delivery date and price are determined by marketing department and capacity is determined by operation department. On the premise of maximizing overall effectiveness of the firm, each department makes their own decisions and share costs according to the division of labor.Currently, most studies on promised delivery date based on MTO mode only focus on a single firm or a node of supply chain. Therefore, this dissertation studies this issue from three levels, the single enterprise, the marketing/operation interface in internal supply chain and each enterprise in external supply chain. Firstly, the dissertation studies the promised delivery date from the consumer choice behavior and the service level constraint based on a single firm. Then, it extends the issue to promised delivery date, pricing and capacity decision between marketing and operation department in the internal supply chain. Finally, it discusses the promised delivery date and pricing decision among enterprises in the external supply chain.For promised delivery date decision in a single firm, this dissertation firstly studies based on customer choice behavior. Assuming the customers are sensitive to the promised delivery date and quality of service, the firm should consider the cost of delay and the objective of maximizing expected profit, so this dissertation builds the promised delivery date decision model based on the MNL (Multi-Nominal Logit) consumer choice behavior. Research shows, when customers are sensitive to promised delivery date and quality of service, the optimal promised delivery date is longer than the optimal expected delivery date of customer.Then, the study turns to consider the service level constraint. In order to maximize expected profit, it builds pricing and delivery date decision model with and without the service level constraint, analyses the manufacturer’s optimal pricing, optimal delivery date and the maximum expected profit, then discusses the impact of the service level constraint on the joint pricing and delivery date policy. The results present that the impact of the service level constraint on optimal policy is segmented, in which it has a relationship with the holding costs, and the sensitivity coefficient of delivery date and price. When the service level constraint is equal to the probability distribution of the optimal promised delivery date without considering service level constraint, the expected profit is maximum.On the issue of promised delivery date, pricing and capacity decisions based on the marketing and operation interface in internal supply chain, this dissertation firstly takes the price as an exogenous variable from the perspective of internal supply chain. Based on the single order and the time-sensitive demand, it considers the promised delivery date and capacity decisions between operations and marketing departments under decentralized and centralized decision, and analyzes the sensitivity of parameters. The results show, when only considering a single order, regardless of the impact of delivery date on demand, no matter how the delay cost is allocated between two departments, the optimal service level under centralized decision is better than decentralized decision. And the result of comparing the optimal decision and the optimal expected cost under centralized and decentralized decision relics on the sharing ratio of delay cost between two departments. When considering the time-sensitive demand, that is, the impact of promised delivery date on demand, no matter how the delay cost is allocated between two departments and how each parameter changes, the entire optimal expected cost under the centralized decision is lower than the decentralized decision.As a further discussion of issue above, this dissertation continues to take price as an endogenous variable. Under the time-price-sensitive demand, it presents promised delivery date, pricing and capacity decision between operations and marketing departments under decentralized and centralized decision-making, and analyzes the sensitivity of each parameter. The numerical analysis shows, when the delay cost is shared between two departments, no matter how sharing ratio is allocated and each parameter changes, the service level and the expected profits under centralized decision-making are higher than decentralized decision-making.For the promised delivery date and pricing decisions in external supply chain, this dissertation studies on the promised delivery date and pricing decision under different decision-making power on delivery date from the perspective of external supply chain. In a single-manufacturer-single-retailer’s two-echelon supply chain system, on the objective of maximizing the expected profit, it establishes the delivery date decision-making models controlled by different supply chain firms, then obtains the optimal solution, and explores the impact of different decision-making power on optimal delivery date and the maximum expected profit. The study shows, the characteristics of customer demand affect the control and decision of delivery date. In order to achieve the maximum expected profit, the supply chain should let the manufacturer to control the delivery date. However, when the ratio of delivery date and price sensitivity of customer exceeds a certain value, supply chain system should trade off between the service competitiveness and the maximum expected profit to select the decision-making power of delivery date.