The coordinating contracts of supply chain in a fuzzy decision environment

Springerplus. 2016 Jul 1;5(1):953. doi: 10.1186/s40064-016-2401-4. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

The rapid change of the product life cycle is making the parameters of the supply chain models more and more uncertain. Therefore, we consider the coordination mechanisms between one manufacturer and one retailer in a fuzzy decision marking environment, where the parameters of the models can be forecasted and expressed as the triangular fuzzy variables. The centralized decision-making system, two types of supply chain contracts, namely, the revenue sharing contract and the return contract are proposed. To obtain their optimal policies, the fuzzy set theory is adopted to solve these fuzzy models. Finally, three numerical examples are provided to analyze the impacts of the fuzziness of the market demand, retail price and salvage value of the product on the optimal solutions in two contracts. It shows that in order to obtain more fuzzy expected profits the retailer and the manufacturer should seek as low fuzziness of demand, high fuzziness of the retail price and the salvage value as possible in both contracts.

Keywords: Fuzzy set; Return contract; Revenue sharing contract; Supply chain coordination; Triangular fuzzy number.