چكيده به لاتين
There are two important questions in the fresh-products supply chain (FSC) in Iran. Firstly, which market (open or organized markets) is more suitable for trading the fresh-product items? Secondly, how do the FSC members decide (decentralized or coordinated decision-making approaches) to minimize the waste amount while the profit of FSC members to be reasonably quarantined? In this research, to answer the first question, the open and organized markets are modeled and analyzed. Then, the best market in terms of economic factors is selected. Afterward, to answer the second question, a coordination model between FSC members is proposed in the selected market, which determines in the first model.
Accordingly, in the first model of this research, the different fresh-product market types (i.e., open and organized markets) considering a single-supplier and a single-buyer under stochastic demand are studied. The investigated supplier-buyer chain is modeled using two different approaches including (1) the selling cycle in the open market without considering the government’s incentives and, (2) the selling cycle in the organized market considering the government's incentives. In the open market approach, a Stackelberg game model is proposed for deteriorating products by considering the shortage inventory, the leftover inventory, and Value-Added Tax (VAT) plan. The stochastic demand is dependent on the retail price, freshness degree of the fresh-product item, and marketing efforts. To develop a model for the organized market approach, we have extended the model of open market approach considering the government’s incentives including short-term tax breaks and a single-window system. Finally, the proposed models are approved with a data set from a real-life case study. The results show that the government's incentives increase the profit of all the FSC members under the organized market approach. Moreover, the results of conducted sensitivity analyses help governments to accurately adjust the VAT rate and commission percentages in TSC and MSC approach, respectively.
Since the supplier and buyer attempt to optimize their individual objective functions in any market type, the decentralized approach may be not a suitable way for decision-making and could weaken the FSC performance. Therefore, in the second model of this research, a coordinated decision-making approach is proposed to improve the FSC performance. However, in the coordinated approach, it is important to confirm that all FSC members benefit from the joint approach compared to decentralize one. Accordingly, the investigated chain in the organized market is modeled under three decision-making approaches as follows: (1) decentralized decision-making approach where each FSC member determines its decision variables separately to optimize its own profit, (2) centralized decision-making approach where a central manager maximizes the entire FSC profit from the holistic viewpoint, and (3) coordinated decision-making approach that induces FSC members to move from the decentralized model to the centralized one. To achieve the coordination approach, a novel revenue-and-preservation-technology-investment-sharing (RPTIS) contract is designed to coordinate individual FSC members and achieve a win-win situation for both the supplier and buyer. the proposed contract not only increases the whole FSC profit along with the individual members' profit but also significantly increases the freshness degree and surviving quantities of fresh products; thereby reducing the level of product waste.
