Supply Chain Coordination: Information Sharing In A Three -Echelon Supply Chain

Abstract

Information sharing is vital to the coordination among parties in a supply chain. Information sharing can improve supply chain efficiency by minimizing inventory and balancing output. This thesis investigates the values of demand and inventory information sharing in a three-echelon supply chain system (retailer - distributor - manufacturer), and how the profitability of each member in the sharing information strategy. The centralized system and the decentralized system were performed. The Salop model was developed to show the impacts of the ordering quantity and pricing strategy in the three-echelon supply chain. We used a numerical study to demonstrate the proposed models and conduct sensitivity analysis on some of the key parameters. The result shows that the sharing information settings, especially the distributor-manufacturer system, bring the benefít to the whole supply chain.