Component Procurement Strategies in Decentralized Assemble-to-Order Systems with Time-Dependent Pricing
研究合同制造商如何通过供应商管理的寄售库存方案，协调独立供应商的组件生产决策，以应对需求不确定性和时间依赖定价，并开发了最优定价算法。
We consider a contract manufacturer who procures multiple components from independent suppliers to produce an assemble-to-order customized product for a client. The unit price of the product depends on the manufacturer's delivery lead time. We explore how the manufacturer can use a vendor-managed consignment inventory (VMCI) scheme to manage the underlying risk and coordinate independent suppliers' decisions on the production quantities of their components under demand uncertainty. We formulate the problem as a Stackelberg game played by the manufacturer against her component suppliers to determine her pricing policy for suppliers' consignment inventories. We further develop an efficient algorithm for finding the manufacturer's optimal pricing scheme. Our results provide useful insights for managing components in these types of assemble-to-order environments and for understanding how component production cost and procurement lead times affect individual firms' performance in decentralized assembly channels.