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International Journal of Computer and Engineering Optimization - IJCEO

BENEFITS OF WALMART'S ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE SYSTEM AND RESOURCE PLANNING MECHANISM FOR SUPPLIERS


This study examines a model of SC contracting involving a procurer seeking to obtain as much merchandise as possible at the lowest price. The supplier in this model possesses secluded statistics regarding its limited production capacity. Two information-sharing models are compared. The first one is where the supplier observes its capacity and reports it to the purchaser for committing to a purchase. This is referred to as the "Supply Chain" contract. The second model is; the purchaser directly hooks up with the supplier's Enterprise Resource Planning system with EDI. This eliminates information asymmetry. This is called the "Full Information" contract. Although more economically efficient, suppliers may not want to accept the Full Information contract, since they would fear threats over profit margins or loss in control over sensitive information. The proposed third contract is termed as the "Hybrid" contract. This contract gives the buyer all the efficiency gains of the Full Information contract and yet ensures the supplier gets the same profits as with the Supply Chain contract. Although these benefits make the Hybrid contract preferable to the Full Information (FI) contract in its cost, the buyer will still prefer the Full Information contract over the Hybrid contract. A new level of complexity arises if the supplier can invest to expand capacity. It can be inferred that if the Hybrid contract encourages higher investment, then, depending on the level of information asymmetry not being extremely high, the buyer will also eventually want to choose Hybrid over the Full Information contract.