Flexibility or Cost Saving? Sourcing Decisions with Two Suppliers
研究一个买家面对提供灵活数量合同的供应商和提供低价合同的供应商时，如何优化采购和预测决策，发现多源采购能带来显著收益，且过度灵活性可能反而有利于低价供应商。
ABSTRACT This article studies a decentralized supply chain in which there are two suppliers and a single buyer. One supplier offers the quantity flexibility (QF) contract to the buyer, while the other offers the cheaper price. Under the QF contract, the buyer does not assume full responsibility for the forecast, yet the supplier guarantees the availability of the forecasted quantity with additional buffer inventory. On the other hand, the price‐only contract places full inventory burden on the buyer, but with a cheaper price. We study this problem from the buyer's perspective and solve for the buyer's optimal procurement and forecasting decisions. We identify areas where flexibility and cheaper price have an advantage, one over the other. Our results indicate that the buyer significantly benefits from having multiple sources of supply. We also find that, from the system's standpoint, a multisupplier system may outperform a single‐supplier supply chain under certain conditions. Interestingly, we observe that providing too much flexibility may benefit the low‐price supplier rather than benefiting the QF supplier. We discuss the managerial implications and provide directions for future research opportunities.