COMPETITION AND COOPERATION BETWEEN SUPPLY CHAINS: A GAME-THEORETIC APPROACH

Since the theory of non-cooperative and cooperative games is used for the analysis of situations involving conflict and cooperation, it has become a commonly-used methodological tool in investigating supply chain-related problems, but most of them have developed for competition or cooperation between the various members at one supply chain. In this paper, we have developed a methodology for competition or cooperation between several supply chains. At first, a multi-objective model with various constraints has been developed for optimizing a general overall value of each supply chain. Then, the obtained multi-objective problem has been converted to a linear programming problem by using of a fuzzy approach and defining of utility functions for each objective. After solving this model, we assume that each supply chain participate at a game to maximizing its overall value regarding to overall values of other supply chains. Thus, we use of game theory techniques for achieving to equilibrium point at game between supply chains. Finally, a numerical example is illustrated by two supply chains that each of them have two material supplier partners, three manufacturing partners and two logistics partners where there are three customers for two products of them.

Keywords:

Supply chain management , Game theory , Competition , Cooperation , Fuzzy approach , Methodology