Stochastic Production Capacity: A Bane or a Boon for Quick Response Supply Chains?

Abstract

The quick response (QR) system that can cope with demand volatility by shortening lead time has been well studied in the literature. Much of the existing literature assumes implicitly or explicitly that the manufacturers under QR can always meet the demand because the production capacity is always sufficient. However, when the order comes with a short lead time under QR, availability of the manufacturer's production capacity is not guaranteed. This motivates us to explore QR in supply chains with stochastic production capacity. Specifically, we study QR in a two-echelon supply chain with Bayesian demand information updating. We consider the situation where the manufacturer's production capacity under QR is uncertain. We first explore how stochastic capacity affects supply chain decisions and QR implementation. We then incorporate the manufacturer's ability to expand capacity into the model. We explore how the manufacturer determines the optimal capacity expansion decision, and the value of such an ability to the supply chain and its agents. Furthermore, we study the case where the retailer works with the manufacturer to expand capacity by the revenue and cost sharing contract, and characterize the conditions under which Pareto optimality and coordination can be achieved. Finally, we extend the model to the two-stage two-ordering case and derive the optimal ordering policy by dynamic programming. We compare the single-ordering and two-ordering cases to generate additional managerial insights about how ordering flexibility affects QR when production capacity is stochastic.