Gaining Benefits from Joint Forecasting and Replenishment Processes: The Case of Auto-Correlated Demand
研究了零售商与供应商在自相关需求下，不共享信息、供应商管理库存和联合预测补货三种供应链配置的成本效益，揭示信息共享与协作的价值。
In this paper we consider a cooperative, two-level supply chain consisting of a retailer and a supplier. As in many practical settings, the supply chain members progressively observe market signals that enable them to explain future demand. The demand itself evolves according to an auto-regressive time series. We examine three types of supply chain configurations. In the first setting, the retailer and the supplier coordinate their policy parameters in an attempt to minimize systemwide costs, but they do not share their observations of market signals. In the second setting, resembling many original vendor-managed inventory (VMI) programs, the supplier takes the full responsibility of managing the supply chain's inventory, but the retailer's observations of market signals are not transferred to him. In our third setting, reminiscent of collaborative forecasting and replenishment partnerships, inventory is managed centrally, and all demand related information is shared. We propose a set of stylized models to study the three settings and use them to provide managerial insights into the value of information sharing, VMI, and collaborative forecasting.