Prof. Xiaoqiang Cai
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Talk:
Optimization and Coordination of Supply Chains of Fresh Products Requiring Long-distance Transportation
Abstract:
Fresh-food supply chains have the distinct feature that the production and the market are often vastly separate. As a consequence, long distance transportation is usually inevitable, during which the product may suffer both quality deterioration and quantity obsolescence. A freshness-keeping effort may be adopted to control the degree of perishability, at a cost. This talk reports our recent work in this area, which consists of two parts. The first part considers the problem where the transaction between the producer and the distributor is based on an FOB term, under which the distributor is responsible for the transportation cost and loss. The distributor faces a random market demand, sensitive to both the selling price and the freshness of the product. We characterize the optimal decisions of both parties in decentralized and decentralized systems. We further develop an incentive scheme to facilitate coordination, which consists of a discount-sharing contract and a buy-back arrangement for unsold product. The second part of this talk considers the problem in which the producer is responsible for the product transportation. A 3PL provider is involved. Optimal decisions in decentralized, partially centralized, and fully centralized systems are derived. Coordination contracts are also developed.
Biography:
Xiaoqiang Cai is a professor at the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His main research interests include scheduling models and algorithms, logistics and supply chain management, and optimization techniques and applications. He has published over 90 papers in academic journals in these areas, such as OR, MS, POM, NRL, IIE Transactions, and IEEE Transactions. He has also co-authored one book on time-varying network optimization by Springer. He has been an associate editor and guest editor for several journals, including Annals of Operations Research, IIE Transactions, and Journal of Scheduling. In 2003, he received the Distinguished Young Investigator Award (overseas category) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
