Models for Delivery and Price Equilibrium and Statistical Quality Control in Supply Chains

This dissertation, "Models for Delivery and Price Equilibrium and Statistical Quality Control in Supply Chains" by Min, Cao, 曹敏, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis titled Models for delivery and price equilibrium and statistical quality control in supply chains submitted by Cao Min for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in April 2007 High-quality manufacturing, global logistics, time competition, and highly volatiledemandarecommoncharacteristicsofmodernbusinesses. Thusbeing the case, in this dissertation we first study the nature of delivery and price competition in a buyer-supplier supply chain network, and then study statis- tical quality control which can be applied to many stages in a supply chain. This dissertation consists of two parts. InPartI, wepresentequilibriummodelsfordeliveryandpricecompetition under the assumption of cooperative JIT purchasing and small-lot delivery, in which the buyers request products in small-lot frequent deliveries, while the suppliers compete for order shares by supplying products to the buyers at attractive prices and with good delivery arrangements. The equilibrium con- ditions are derived using a finite variational inequality in which decentralized decisions are made simultaneously by the participants. We also consider two scenariosaboutthetransportationofproducts, inwhichModel1assumesthat iithe buyers are responsible for transportation of the products purchased, and Model 2 assumes that the suppliers are responsible for delivering the products to the buyers. We investigate how cost affects delivery and price competi- tion, and how delivery competition changes demand allocation. Most policies available in the literature aim at maximizing expected profit. In uncertain environments, however, the actual profit attained may deviate from the max- imum expected profit when the probabilities of unfavorable outcomes such as lost sales or excess storage are large. In order to enhance the profitability of buyers who face volatile demand, an information entropy approach is used to minimize the increase in information entropy in Model 3. Numerical examples are given to illustrate these models. In Part II, we develop and study a new statistical distribution called neg- ative binomial group distribution (NBGD), which is derived from a group by groupinspectionprocedurecallednegativebinomialgroupinspection(NBGI). Based on the NBGI, we propose a new control chart called the cumulative group count control chart (CGCC chart) and a new sequential acceptance sampling plan. Numerical examples are given to show how the CGCC chart and the NBGD acceptance sampling plan work as tools in statistical quality control. TheproposedCGCC chartandtheNBGDacceptancesamplingplan provide examples for the construction of two-dimensional control charts and acceptance sampling plans. (375 words ) iii DOI: 10.5353/th_b3857609 Subjects: Delivery of goods - Mathematical models Business logistics - Mathematical models