Incentive Mechanism Design in Operations and Supply Chain Management

标题：运营与供应链管理中的激励机制设计 供应链由由决策者管理的相互关联的企业组成，这些企业的目标可能不同，彼此的目标信息不对称。激励机制设计考虑了委托人(如零售商)比代理人(如制造商)对问题的某些方面了解较少的这种不对称性。在道德风险类型的问题中，委托人不能观察代理人的行为，因此报酬必须基于一个可验证的变量，如销售水平。委托人必须设计一份合同，使代理人的行为与她的激励相一致，并使委托人受益。这一理论在经济学中有几个应用，但在运筹学和供应链管理中的应用似乎很少。在本提案中，我将侧重于机制设计和开发与运营和供应链管理应用程序相关的模型。 供应(或产量)的不确定性和产品召回的相关问题在许多行业都是常见的、代价高昂的现象。最近在加拿大和美国销售的本田和丰田汽车上安装的100多万个高田安全气囊被召回，给这些公司造成了巨大损失，给车主带来了极大的不便。去年艾伯塔省XL Foods召回牛肉产品，导致XL和麦德龙(Metro)和沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)等杂货店连锁店付出巨额成本，并对消费者造成潜在的健康危害。现有的关于供应不确定性的文献大多研究通过考虑供应商多样化来降低产量随机性对供应链有效性的影响的方法。我提出了一种解决这个问题的替代方法，即采用道德风险型激励结构，使零售商(委托人；“他”)和制造商(代理商；“她”)都受益。这种安排将导致向代理人转账(付款)，并将提高代理人的可靠性，从而降低委托人的供应不确定性。委托人不能直接观察代理人为提高其业务可靠性所做的努力，因此存在信息不对称问题。委托人的问题是为代理人提供一个不同可靠性水平的奖励菜单，这些菜单满足一组激励相容约束(以便她尽最大努力)和一个参与约束(以便她同意参与这个激励计划)。 我的第一个目标是制定和解决这个激励问题，假设决策只做出一次。与许多现有的机制设计模型不同，在现有的机制设计模型中，委托人的菜单由几个选项组成，我将考虑更现实的情况，即代理人可以获得连续的努力水平。一旦我理解了这个静态问题的解的性质，我将考虑委托人和代理人之间的交互延伸到多个阶段的扩展。这种具有连续努力水平的道德风险问题的动态版本可能非常具有挑战性，因为关于这类问题的已发表工作很少，其中激励设计涉及随着时间的推移而相互作用。 激励机制设计理论的应用将使加拿大公司和消费者(作为委托人)受益，为代理商(如上文所述的高田和XL Foods)提供适当的激励。减少供应的不确定性，同时提高消费产品的质量和安全是一个可取的目标，通过明智地应用机制设计理论可以实现这一目标。

TITLE: Incentive Mechanism Design in Operations and Supply Chain Management Supply chains consist of interconnected businesses managed by decision makers with possibly divergent goals and asymmetric information about each other's objectives. Incentive mechanism design takes into account such asymmetry where the principal (e.g., retailer) is less informed than the agent (e.g., manufacturer) about some aspect of the problem. In moral hazard-type problems the principal cannot observe the agent's action and thus the reward must be based on a verifiable variable such as the sales level. The principal must design a contract so that the agent behaves in a way that is compatible with her incentives and also benefits the principal. There are several applications of this theory in economics, but the applications in operations and supply chain management seem to be very few. In this proposal I will focus on mechanism design and develop models which will be relevant in operations and supply chain management applications. Supply (or, yield) uncertainty and the related problem of product recalls are common, and costly, phenomena in many industries. The recent recall of more than 1 million Takata airbags installed in Honda and Toyota vehicles sold in Canada and the U.S. has resulted in large losses for these companies, and substantial inconvenience for owners. Last year's recall of beef products from XL Foods in Alberta has resulted in massive costs for both XL and the grocery store chains such as Metro and Wal-Mart, and potential health hazard for consumers. Most of the existing literature on supply uncertainty investigates methods for reducing the influence of yield randomness on the effectiveness of supply chains by considering supplier diversification. I propose an alternative approach to this problem by employing a moral hazard-type incentive structure which will benefit both the retailer (principal; "he") and manufacturer (agent; "she"). This arrangement will result in a transfer (payment) to the agent and will improve the agent's reliability thereby lowering the principal's supply uncertainty. The principal cannot directly observe the agent's effort to improve the reliability of her operations, thus the problem is one of asymmetric information. The principal's problem is to offer the agent a menu of rewards for different levels of reliability which satisfy a set of incentive compatibility constraints (so that she provides her best possible effort), and a participation constraint (so that she will agree to participate in this incentive scheme). My first goal is to formulate and solve this incentive problem assuming that the decisions are made only once. Different from many of the existing models of mechanism design where the principal's menu consists of a few options, I will consider the more realistic case of a continuum of effort levels that are available to the agent. Once I understand the properties of the solution for this static problem, I will consider the extension where the interaction between the principal and the agent extends to multiple periods. This dynamic version of the moral hazard problem with a continuum of effort levels is likely to be very challenging since there is little published work on such problems where the incentive design involves interaction over time. Application of incentive mechanism design theory would benefit Canadian companies and consumers (as the principals) by providing suitable incentives for the agents (such as Takata and XL Foods quoted above). Reducing uncertainty in supply while increasing the quality and safety of consumer products is a desirable goal which can be achieved with a judicious application of mechanism design theory.