Research On Operational Strategies For Capital-constrained Supply Chains With Horizontal Competition

The manufacturer's financial constraint may lead to unsmooth production,so the downstream firm will face the risk of supply shortages or supply disruption in the supply chain operation,which the firms can not do optimal decisions and their profit decreased rapidly.Especially the manufacturer produce under limited production capacity and the actual output is subject to a random production yield,which further restricting the firms' decisons.In order to release financial constraint,trade credit and bank financing are commonly used.Trade credit,mainly including advance payment and delayedment,is the business credit between supply chain enterprises or between supply chain enterprises and their customers.So trade credit enrichs the payment terms between firms.With tremendous development of E-Business,selling in the network becomes the popular terminal channel.Many enterprises competing in the same target market,which called horizontal competition,has been an unavoidable channel conflict.In recent years,with the practice of supply chain management,academe begins to focus on internal research between trade credit and operation,which pay more attention on operational and financing strategy of capital-constrained retailers,such as external financing under core enterprise's guarantee or internal financing from supplier.Nevertheless,based on multiple payment terms and horizontal competition,optimal operation and financing strategy of capital-constraint manufacturer is rarely involved in previous literature on supply chain management.This dissertation,considering the capital constraint manufacturer,firstly generates the supply chain operation strategies under multiple payment terms in single distribution channel,and disscuss the influences of random yield and limited production capacity,then decide the optimal choice of payment terms for manufacturer and retailer.Secondly,we respectively discuss the optimal operational strategies under double distribution channel and direct selling channel,then decide the optimal choice of distribution channel for manufacturer,and explore the influence of dowmstream horizontal competition.Finally we investigate the supply chain operation strategies under upstream horizontal competion with multiple payment terms,and explore the influence of upstream horizontal completion.This thesis consists of six chapters.In the first chapter,we describe the background and contributions of this thesis.In the second chapter,we summarize relevant literatures.In chapter three,the supply chain,including a manufacturer and a retailer under random demand or yield.The manufacturer,who sells product through retailer,is subjected to insufficient cash that affect the actual output,retailer suffers the more risk of shortages under limited produduction capacity.Also,there are options of payment terms in the dealing.We discuss the optimal ordering decision and discounted wholesale price under random demand or random yield based on advance payment,then discuss these based on delayed payment or punctual payment.The retailer's and manufacturer's optimal profit are obtained under different payment terms.We further explore the influence of random yield or limited production capacity to operational strategy and compare the supply chain's ordering decision and optimal profite under different payment terms,and then we decide the optimal choice of payment terms for retailer and manufacturer and reveal the function of financing for advance payment.Finally,revenue sharing as supply chain contract can achieve the unity of payment.In chapter four,the capital-constraint manufacturer sells procudt through multpli distributional channels.Fristly,some traditional retailers order from the same manufacturer and compete for each other in the terminal market.In addition,manufacturer sell his product directly to consume for himself under B2 C,then this to retailer,manufacturer play the role of a supplier in the upstream and a competitor in the downstream.The operational decisions and dealing with the limited working capital will be complicated.Thus we consider a supply chain composed of a manufacturer and two retailers where the manufacturer is financial constrained,and respectively investigate the operational strategy under different payment and sequential decision based on double distrubiton channel.The operation decisions of supply chain,which is expanding to a manufacturer and N retailers,are also explored and are compared with that of single distribution channel.The influences of horizontal competiton are analysed and the optimal profit are obtained under different sequential decision.We propose the boundary condition of optimal payment.Secondly we consider a supply chain which includes a capital constrained manufacturer and a retailer,where the manufacturer sell directly product to consume that forms a horizontal competition with retailer.We discuss the operational strategy under different payment and sequential decision;then study the influence of direct selling on ordering decision,the production quantity decision and show the optimal choice of payment in the capital-constrained supply chain.Finally we compare the optimal profit under single distributon channel,double distributon channel and direct selling channel in order to choose the optimal channel for manufacturer.In chapeter five,there are more alternative of manufacturer's product and the competiveness of enterprise in the downstream becomes power,even the retailer is leader in the supply chain.Thus we consider a supply chain composed of a retailer and two manufacturers where one is financial constrained but another is not,and discuss the operational decisions based on different payment terms.Then we explore the influence of downstream horizontal competition to retailer's ordering or discounted wholesale price and propose the boundary condition of optimal payment for the member enterprise under manufacturer's leading or retailer's leading.The sixth chapter summarizes the conclusions of the thesis and points out the shortcomings and the future research directions.The main contributions of the thesis are as follows:1.We address the optimal operational strategyies for capital-constrained supply chain under horizontal competition,and show the influence of horizontal competition to optimal decisions and optimal profit.It contributes the existing researchs that mostly consider the supply chain consisting of one manufacturer/one supplier and one retailer.The previous literatures frequently study the capital-constrained supply chain composed of a retailer and a manufacturer who sell product through single distribution channel.But The competition between retailers or between manufacturers or between retailer and manufacturer has been sharp,such as retailers satisfy customers' demand by procurement activity or brand,manufacturer has created additional demand opportunity that sell product to customers with Internet or Ebusiness,and manufacuturers yield similar product.Also in the view of interaction research between marketing and operation,many previous literatures discuss optimal channel,pricing,inventory allocation based on upstream horizontal competition or downstream,but enterprises' s capital constrain is rarely explored in the supply chain.So we address the optimal operational strategies for capital-constrained supply chain under influence of horizontal and analyze the influence of horizontal competition to optimal decisions and profit.2.We put forward retailer's ordering and manufacturer's discounted wholesale price for capital constraint supply chain under random yield,and reveal the influence of limited production capacity.The previous research on capital-contrained supply chain under limited production capacity is no sufficient.The main existing researches around capital-constraint supply chain focus on inventory,financing,yield and so on.Especially many literatures of the interaction research assume that ordering from retailer is seldom influenced by random yield and limited production capacity.In reality,the producton quantity is limited by fixed investment as equipment and labours,while production process,which is also faced with much random element,influences the quantity.Also,many previous researches on optimal operational decisions under random yield rarely considered the capital constraint.Therefore,we deeply study retailer's ordering and manufacturer's discounted wholesale price for capital constraint supply chain under random yield,and reveal the influence of limited production capacity.3.We derive the optimal operational strategy under multiple payment terms,and reveal the advance payment's financing function.Then we propose the boundary condition of optimal payment for each enterprise in the supply chain.Most of the previous literatures around the interaction research between trade credit and operation decisions analyzed the issure that the manufacturer provides delayed payment for the capital-constrainted retailer.The studies on the downstream firm's advance payment or the upstream firm's capital constraint are not sufficient.Many results also were derived under single payment terms as advance payment or early payment,but the reality is that there are more options of payment terms in the trading shcemes for each firm.Thus the hypothesis of trading under single payment neglects the contradiction and disunity of cash flow between supply chain enterprises.To a capital-constrained enterprise,it is very serious to select a suitable payment.So we explore the boundary condition of optimal for each enterprise in the supply chain and design the supply chain coordinating mechanism as revenue sharing to unity the payment terms in the single distribution channel.