Strategic Decisions for Final Product Assembly in 3-D Printing Supply Chains: A Supply Chain Positioning Perspective
研究了3D打印供应链中最终产品组装应由上游还是下游成员完成的问题，通过博弈论模型发现最优分配取决于各成员的组装成本，并提出了回购合同来协调供应链。
A supply chain system comprises both upstream and downstream members, and in many contexts, a final product assembly (FPA) step is required before products reach the market. Deciding whether and when this FPA step should be undertaken by upstream or downstream supply chain members has become a practical and timely challenge, particularly as 3D printing technologies now enable and support flexible FPA processes. This paper tackles this critical question by developing analytical models grounded in game theory. In our basic model, we consider a supply chain with a single supplier and a single retailer selling a seasonal product. The FPA step incurs costs that vary depending on which supply chain agent performs the task. Our analysis reveals that, from the perspective of the entire supply chain system, the optimal assignment of FPA responsibility is uniquely determined by the respective FPA costs of the members. To achieve this optimal supply chain outcome, we need to identify the best-suited member to undertake the FPA process and coordinate the supply chain accordingly. To this end, we propose the use of a buyback contract and analytically derive its contract bounds. To generate further insights and demonstrate the robustness of our results, we extend our analysis to cover two additional scenarios: (i) markets with two products, and (ii) contexts where the retailer offers make-to-order (MTO) services for final product assembly. Our findings confirm that the core results from the baseline model remain valid, while also yielding several new insights. We believe that the results of this study not only make substantial contributions to the literature on supply chain systems but also offer actionable guidance to practitioners and systems engineers on how to optimally decide which agent should assume the FPA task within supply chain systems.