In this paper we investigate four sourcing models with respect to both cooperative or noncooperative planning strategies, and sole or dual sourcing. A two-stage supply chain is considered, which includes a single buyer and either a single or dual vendor(s). At the buyer the product is consumed at a constant rate, and an (r, Q) policy is used to generate replenishment orders. The vendors have a ...

Typically the vendor allocation problem for a commercial company requires the buyer to allocate business between the selected vendor suppliers to meet its needs at minimum cost, taking account of its quality and delivery performance requirements. However in a government sponsored entrepreneur development programme, the allocation of business cannot only be made dependent on criteria that reflec...

In many vendor-manufacturer partnerships, it is quite typical for the vendor to hold consignment stock on behalf of the manufacturer, usually through an ’in-plant’ from the vendor organization who is resident at the manufacturer’s premises. However, empirical evidence suggests that where the buyer is dominant, suppliers are often forced to carry inventory either as part of the contract or to qu...

Supply chain management is concerned with the coordination of different parts of the production system. Companies have realized that they must closely collaborate with the suppliers of their strategic components or products. Recently, developing integrated inventory models for the supplier selection problem has attracted a significant amount of attention amongst researchers. In these models som...

We investigate the role of options (contingent claims) in a buyer-supplier system. Specifically using a two-period model with correlated demand, we illustrate how options provide flexibility to a buyer to respond to market changes in the second period. We also study the implications of such arrangements between a buyer and a supplier for coordination of the channel. We show that, in general, ch...

We use an economic learning model to examine how knowledge parameters characterizing a sourcing relationship between a vendor and a client interact with production costs and coordination costs to affect the business value of alternative outsourcing strategies. This information is then used to determine a firm’s optimal rate of information technology (IT) outsourcing. We find that the optimal ou...

This paper develops a research model on the roles of transaction cost reduction and explicit coordination in mediating the impacts of inter-organizational information systems (IOS) use on buyer benefits. Empirical tests find that both the transaction costs reduction and explicit coordination are significantly impacted by IOS use. However, it is found that the impacts of IOS use on buyer benefit...

There are many benefits for coordination of multiple suppliers when single supplier cannot satisfy buyer demands.  In addition, buyer needs to purchase multiple items in a real supply chain. So, a model that satisfies these requests has many advantages. We extend the existing approaches in the literature that assume all suppliers need to be put on a common replenishment cycle and each supplier ...