"Improving Visibility, Risk Management and Economic Sustainability of Supply Chains"

最近商业环境的变化，如大规模离岸外包，缩短产品生命周期和注重新兴经济体作为增长动力，对北美公司的供应链产生了重大影响。最重要的影响是：（一）分散的供应链，造成链伙伴之间的激励不对称，（二）从供应和需求的角度来看，风险增加，以及（三）整个链缺乏可见性，导致链伙伴之间的信息不对称。该研究计划的目标是开发规范模型，帮助管理人员更好地科普这种增加的风险，并提供供应链的端到端可见性，并为链合作伙伴带来更好的经济成果。为此，我们将首先解决受监管行业产品开发背景下的供应方风险管理问题，以及一级供应商在不通知OEM的情况下将产品外包给次级供应商的供应链。随后，我们将开发一个集成的供应链框架，包括激励不对称，需求和供应的风险和缺乏有关这两种风险的信息。我们的目标是分析该框架，以便更好地了解链合作伙伴如何使用不同类型的战略来减轻这种风险和不对称。虽然上述两个研究项目将集中在程式化的模型，在第三个，我们打算研究更现实的供应链风险管理模型在两个特定的背景下：新兴经济体和自然资源部门。这两种设置在某种意义上是相似的，它们都遭受上面讨论的风险和不对称问题。鉴于许多加拿大公司的目标是进入新兴市场，加拿大经济非常依赖自然资源，这两个领域对加拿大经济至关重要。在这个阶段，我们的目标是开发和分析能够捕捉到它们特性的框架。我们相信，从上述两个背景模型中得出的战略和战术见解将有助于加拿大公司更好地在全球市场上竞争。

Recent changes in business environments like large-scale offshoring, shortening product lifecycles and focus on emerging economies as growth drivers, have significantly impacted the supply chains of North American firms. The most important effects are: i) fragmented supply chains that create incentive asymmetry among the chain partners, ii) an increase in risk from both supply and demand perspectives, and, iii) lack of visibility across the chain that results in information asymmetry among the chain partners. The objective of this research program is to develop normative models that can help managers to better cope with this increased risk and provide end-to-end visibility of supply chains as well as result in improved economic outcomes for the chain partners. In order to do so, we will first address the issue of supply side risk management in the context of product development in regulated industries and for supply chains where tier-1 suppliers outsource to sub-tier suppliers without informing the OEM. Subsequently, we will develop an integrative supply chain framework that incorporates incentive asymmetry, both demand and supply risks and lack of information about both such risks. The goal would be to analyze the framework in order to better understand how chain partners can use different types of strategies to mitigate such risks and asymmetries. While the above two research projects will focus on stylized models, in the third one we intend to study more realistic models of supply chain risk management in two specific contexts: emerging economies and the natural resource sector. These two settings are similar in the sense that both of them suffer from risk and asymmetry issues discussed above. Given that many Canadian companies are aiming to enter emerging markets and Canadian economy is very much dependent on natural resources, both these domains are vital for the Canadian economy. In this phase our objective will be to develop and analyze frameworks that capture their idiosyncrasies. We are confident that the strategic and tactical insights developed from the above two contextual models would help Canadian firms to better compete in the global marketplace.