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A three-echelon supply chain with asymmetric information under uncertainty

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Abstract

This paper investigates a three-echelon supply chain problem in which multiple suppliers, a single manufacturer and a single retailer are participants. The manufacturer selects suppliers and estimates quantity of defective components purchased from the suppliers, but the quality information is unavailable for the manufacture due to asymmetric information. In addition, customers’ demands could not be predicated accurately either. Under this circumstance, quantity of defective components and demands of customers are all characterized as uncertain variables according to real trade. Based on uncertainty theory, three models under different criteria such as expected value criterion, chance-constrained one and measure-chance one are constructed for the problem and corresponding solution approach is proposed as well under uncertain environment. Finally, some numerical examples are given to show the applications of the problem.

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Funding

This study was funded by the Changzhou Application Basic Research Program (CJ20160050) and Natural science of Jiangsu Province (BK20170318).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automobile and Traffic Engineering, Jiangsu University of Technology, Changzhou, China

    Kai Zhu & Xuelian Yao

  2. School of Science, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

    Jiayu Shen

Authors
  1. Kai Zhu
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  2. Jiayu Shen
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  3. Xuelian Yao
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Correspondence to Kai Zhu.

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Zhu, K., Shen, J. & Yao, X. A three-echelon supply chain with asymmetric information under uncertainty. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 10, 579–591 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-018-0705-7

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