Cooperative Game-theoretic Approach for Supplier Selection, Pricing and Inventory Decisions in a Multi-level Supply Chain

摘要

To implement supply chain management, the coordination and integration of the activities within organization and across the supply chain is necessary. Effectively selecting and evaluating suppliers and managing their involvement in critical supply chain activities play vital roles in building competitive supply chain. This paper proposes an integrated approach for optimal supplier selection, pricing and inventory decisions in a multi-level supply chain. A cooperative game approach is used to evaluate the marginal contribution of the supply chain members, especially the suppliers. A numerical study and sensitive analysis are conducted to examine the integrated supply chain model and cooperative game model. The results show that: the rise of one retail market scale increases the retail price and demand for the product in this market, while without influencing on the other retail market; furthermore, an increased market scale rises up the importance of this market and the suppliers who only provide components for the product in this market; the change of setup cost has relatively little impact on the pricing decisions and marginal contributions of the supply chain members.