Tradeoffs and random yield in supply chain management

This dissertation studies some tradeoff issues in supply chain management, generally, tradeoffs between price and information. It contains three essays studying the tradeoffs and random yield problems in supply chain management. The first essay studies the firm's market segmentation on product's delivery delay. Customers have different preference on the price-delay tradeoff; and firms have incentive to offer price discount on delivery delay to gain flexibility in operations and reduce costs---tradeoff between price and time. The firm's optimal strategy on both customer selection and inventory control is studied in this essay and the algorithm on finding the optimal price-delay offerings is developed. The firm only serves the right customer with the right service at the right price, which is the essence of operations. This essay sheds lights on the firm's strategic decisions on coordination among different function units.; The second essay studies a manufacture-supplier supply chain when manufacturer has random yield in production and a wholesale price contract is used. The game between supplier and manufacturer is discussed; and optimal decisions of both parties are derived and analyzed. Learning effect in random yield production is addressed in the context of this supply chain. This essay provides insights on different effects of random yield on supply chain.; The third essay studies a supplier-retailer supply chain when supplier has random yield. The essay analyzes the optimal strategies of the supplier and the retailer under different risk sharing contract. The contracts that share overproduction risk, underproduction risk or both risks between the supplier and the retailer are studied and compared, which generates insights on how the performance of the supply chain with random yield can be improved by adopting different contracts.