中国式供应商主导的转运机制在供应链协调中的重要作用

Transshipment has always been an efficient way to meet demand and save inventory for supply chains with multiple retailers. Its value has greatly increased in recent years as demand becomes more volatile and financing cost rises. What mechanism can lead to timely and optimal transshipments and thus supply chain coordination has become a research focus of academia and industry. The existing literature shows that coordination cannot be achieved via retailer-negotiated transshipments (American-style transshipments), even when transshipments only occur at the end of the selling season. We thus propose supplier-facilitated transshipments (Chinese-style transshipments) and consider practical transshipments that occur once or multiple times in the middle of the selling season. A supplier facilitates transshipments through signing a bi-directional adjustment contract with each individual retailer at the start of the selling season. We develop a multi-period stochastic model, incorporating many practical factors including demand updating, information asymmetry among retailers, retailers’ lie about inventory level, etc., and analyze the Nash games between the retailers and the Stackelberg game between the supplier and its retailers. We hope to design an optimal and easy-to-implement adjustment contract, in terms of format and parameters, to attain supply chain coordination. This research will not only contribute to the supply chain management literature, especially on coordination with transshipments, but provides practical transshipment guidance to the industry.

转运/调货一直是多零售商供应链系统用来更好地满足顾客需求、减少库存的有效措施。近年来，随着市场需求不确定性的增加和日趋多样化，以及融资成本和风险的大幅攀升，转运的价值与重要性日益凸显。在多零售商的分散供应链中，采用何种机制促成最优的转运及采购以达到供应链协调成为学术界和实业界关注的热点。已有研究显示，即使转运仅发生在销售期末，零售商间协商转运（美国式转运机制）也很难达到供应链协调。为此，我们提出新的供应商引导的转运方式（中国式转运机制）：供应商通过与每个零售商在销售开始之前签订双向采购合同（即可购买，亦可卖回）来引导转运。通过构造考虑多个实际因素(如消费者需求信息更新、零售商可能谎报库存等)的多周期随机模型，定量分析多零售商间的纳什对策及供应商与零售商之间的主从对策，从而设计出最优且易实施的双向采购合同及价格来实现供应链协调。本研究成果将丰富已有的供应链管理理论，并对现实分散供应链的转运提供有益的指导。

中外各大制造商往往采用通过独立的经销商网络销售商品的运营战略，例如家电制造商海尔、大型设备制造商卡特彼勒等。企业与学术界都非常关注如何协调经销商之间的转运而达成供应链协调，增大整个供应链的利润和竞争能力。现有的研究发现“美国式零售商之间协商的转运机制”不能达到供应链协调。对此，该研究基于漫友文化公司采用的转运模型，提出“中国式供应商引导的转运机制”并进行理论分析其是否可以达成供应链协调。我们建立了合理、严谨的随机模型来研究供应商应该如何在相对实际的供应链环境下，鼓励和协调零售商之间在销售期间的转运以及协调零售商们在销售初期的批量采购。为了适应广泛的实际需求，我们考虑含有多个零售商的完全分散式供应链（其博弈过程最为复杂），允许销售期间进行单次转运（即研究双周期模型），以及消费者需求分布及时更新、零售商可能提供不实的库存信息等多个实际因素。为了设计达成供应链协调，我们需要求解供应商和每个零售商分别在集中式供应链和分散式供应链下的在各个周期的最优决策内容，然后将两套最优决策进行对照和完美匹配。最后，我们利用漫友文化公司的相关数据测试理论结果，发现该公司现在采用的转运模式采用了错误的价格，使得转运不但没有改善供应链，反而使得供应链利润降低。我们提出的转运模式价格合理，可以优化供应链，使得整体利润可以增加近20%。