Teacher(s)
Language
English
Prerequisites
This course is reserved for students with a bachelor's degree in business engineering or students with equivalent quantitative method skills.
Main themes
The course provides an indepth treatment of the relationships between independent firms in a supply chain through the analysis of their behavior, contractual frame, product, process and market choices. The first part of the course aims at understanding and modelling the strategic behavior between firms using the tools of LSM2031 and game theory in order to understand how to design the features and parameters of supply chain information. The second part looks at supplier relationsships from a strategic perspective, interfacing with procurement, production planning and product innovation, to understand the scope and limits of the previously defined tools in contexts such as e.g. armslength, partnerships and supplier pools. Strategic sourcing is a collaborative and systematic approach to reduce external spending, while improving quality, internal processes and total cost of ownership or usage.
Learning outcomes
At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to : | |
1 | During their programme, students of the LSM Master's in management and Master's in Business engineering will have developed the following capabilities : KNOWLEDGE AND REASONING
|
Content
The purpose of the course is to provide analytical skills in supply chain coordination techniques. The base models will be primarily the standard newsboy model for inventory management and simple two-period investment-production models for the strategic game models. Some topics that will be studied:
● Mechanisms for coordination (Information, Relational, Contractual)
● Quantity Discounts
● Buy-back contracts
● Revenue Sharing
● Price Protection and Quantity Flexibility
● Game-theoretical models in supply chain coordination
● Hold-up problems (investment, inventory)
● Investment incentives for product and process innovation
● Mechanisms for coordination (Information, Relational, Contractual)
● Quantity Discounts
● Buy-back contracts
● Revenue Sharing
● Price Protection and Quantity Flexibility
● Game-theoretical models in supply chain coordination
● Hold-up problems (investment, inventory)
● Investment incentives for product and process innovation
Teaching methods
The class is mainly analytical and based on modern readings in the area. The sessions are devoted to theoretical discussions of selected aspects and debriefs of cases and assignments. Applied examples for the concepts using real firms, newspaper clips and numerical illustrations are provided at the lectures. At some occasions, interactive games are used to illustrate the intuition or complexity of certain models. Inbetween lectures, participants work on the reading assignments and the course cases.
Evaluation methods
Continuous evaluation
Individual make-up projects available at request to replace the grade of the lowest graded project.
- Two group projects with modelling and quantitative analysis (2 x 20%)
- Type of evaluation: written report
- Oral: No
- Written: No
- Unavailability or comments: No
- Oral: No
- Written: Yes (2 hours), closed book, one page of personal notes allowed.
- Scope: the final exam can be substituted by a term paper on a topic on supply chain coordination (models, methods, practice).
- The term paper is an individual, well-edited report in English that follows a structure outlined in the course plan, with a clear and individual contribution.
- The term paper topic has to be approved by the instructor by a deadline specified in the course plan and on Moodle.
- Evaluation: Written report and oral presentation.
Individual make-up projects available at request to replace the grade of the lowest graded project.
Other information
Prerequisites (ideally in terms of competencies) LSMS2030 LSMS2031 LSMS2032
The course requires active skills in modelling and coding of optimization problems in a software such as AIMMS, Xpress, GAMS, R or similar.
The course requires active skills in modelling and coding of optimization problems in a software such as AIMMS, Xpress, GAMS, R or similar.
Online resources
Moodle webpage
Bibliography
All required teaching material and supplementary texts available on Moodle.
Teaching materials
- CachonG(2003) Supply Chain Coordination with Contracts.Ch6 in ed. S Tayur, R Ganeshan and M Magazine, Quantitative Models for Supply Chain Management, pp. 198-232.
- Cachon G and S Netessine (2004) Game Theory in Supply Chain Analysis. Ch 6 in David Simchi-Levi, S. David Wu and Zuo-Jun (Max) Shen (Eds.), Supply Chain Analysis in the eBusiness Era, Kluwer.
- Agrell (2023) C1: Toner for the World, Agrell, UCL/LSM, 2023.
- Agrell (2023) Project C2, Agrell, UCL/LSM, 2023
Faculty or entity