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This paper presents a study on the impacts of information sharing and ordering co‐ordination on the performance of a supply chain with one capacitated supplier and multiple retailers under demand uncertainty. In particular, a computer model is proposed to simulate inventory replenishment decisions by the retailers and production decisions by the supplier under different demand patterns and capacity tightness. It is found that information sharing and ordering co‐ordination significantly impact the supply chain performance in terms of both total cost and service level. It is also found that the value of sharing information and ordering co‐ordination is significantly affected by demand patterns and capacity tightness. Guidelines are developed for companies to share information and co‐ordinate orders under different conditions. These guidelines can help companies reduce costs and improve customer service levels in the supply chain.

The development of information technology has made it possible for companies to get access to information about their customers ' future demand. This paper outlines various approaches to utilize this kind of visibility when managing inventories of end products on an operative level. The purpose is to explain the consequences, for capital tied up in inventory, of sharing four different types of planning information (point-of-sales data, customer forecasts, stock-on-hand data, planned orders) when using re-order point (R,Q) inventory control methods in a distribution network.

A simulation study based on randomly generated demand data with a compound Poisson type of distribution is conducted.

The results show that the value of information sharing in operative inventory control varies widely depending on the type of information shared, and depending on whether the demand is stationary or not. Significantly higher value is achieved if the most appropriate types of information sharing are used, while other types of information sharing rather contribute to decreased value. Sharing stock-on-hand information is valuable with stationary demand. Customer forecast and planned order information are valuable with non-stationary demand. The value of information sharing increases when having fewer customers, and when the order quantities are large. Sharing point-of-sales data is not valuable, regardless of the demand type.

The use of simulation methodology is a limitation, because the study has to be limited to a specific model design, and because it is not based on primary empirical data. The study is especially limited to dyadic relationships in supply chains, and to distribution networks with a rather limited number of customers.

Guidance is given about what type of information should be appropriate to share when different types of demand patterns and distribution networks, and how order batch sizes and lead times affect the value of information sharing when using re-order point (R,Q) methods.

Very limited research providing specific assessments of potential inventory control consequences when sharing planning information in various contexts has been found in the literature. The findings and conclusions also question some previous research on information sharing.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how differently aggregated order data may affect inventories and service levels in a serial supply chain and compares the results against various levels of information sharing. By performing sensitivity analysis, critical parameters are identified and conjectures for explaining the divergent results on the value of information sharing in prior literature are given.

By using discrete event simulation, the paper analyses various approaches of differently aggregated order data compared to shared demand information.

The experiments show that suppliers cannot accurately estimate demand means and variances because of time‐depending order quantities and biasing effects of order inter‐arrival times. This may lead to inappropriate computations of reorder points and safety stocks. The aggregation of order data can improve the calculations resulting in lower inventories with almost identical service levels. The mean inventory can also be reduced by sharing information but may lead to considerably lower service levels.

As discovered in this paper, simplifications in the supply chain structure may have large effects on the experimental results. Therefore, the value of information sharing and order aggregation strategies should be analyzed in a more complex supply chain network.

Some ordering mechanisms have the effect of increasing the demand variance for upstream companies. This amplification may lead to inefficiencies throughout the entire supply chain. The paper proposes solutions to managers on how they can benefit from order data aggregation and information sharing. The per period variances may be reduced leading to smaller safety stocks and lower costs for the entire supply chain.

The paper shows that the performance of a supply chain may be improved by aggregating order data and compares the results with improvements derived from information sharing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to study various combination forms of the three basic sharing elements (i.e. orders sharing, manufacturers capacity sharing and suppliers capacity sharing) in the cluster supply chain (CSC), formulate a distributed model to protect enterprises’ decision privacy and seek to develop an effective method for solving the distributed complex model.

A distributed assembly cluster supply chain configuration (ACSCC) model is formulated. An improved augmented Lagrangian coordination (ALC) is proposed and used to solve the ACSCC model. A series of experiments are conducted to validate the improved ALC and the model.

Two major findings are obtained. First, the market order’s quantity change and the sales price of the product have a great impact on both the optimal results of the ACSCC and the cooperative strategy, especially, when the market order increases sharply, enterprises have to adopt multiple cooperative strategies to complete the order; meanwhile, the lower sales price of the product helps independent suppliers to get more orders. Second, the efficiency and computational accuracy of the improved ALC method are validated as compared to the centralized ALC and Lingo11.

This paper formulated the single-period ACSCC model under certain assumptions, yet a multi-period ACSCC model is to be developed, a more comprehensive investigation of the relationships among combination forms is to be extended further and a rigid proof of the improved ALC is necessary.

Enterprises in the industrial cluster should adopt different cooperative strategies in terms of the market order’s quantity change and the sales price of the product.

The proposed various combination forms of sharing elements and the formulated ACSCC model provide guidance to managers in the industrial cluster to choose the proper policy.

This research studies various combination forms of the three basic sharing elements in the CSC. A distributed ACSCC model has been established considering simultaneously multiple sharing elements. An improved ALC is presented and applied to the ACSCC problem.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how wind farms attract wind turbine manufacturers to get involved in wind turbines’ maintenance service with revenue sharing contract of bundled service under which the background of operation and maintenance (O&M) aftermarket of wind turbine exists. The authors also try to extend the results to the application of product plus service business mode on large-scale equipment O&M service. At present, Chinese wind power industry is suffering from production capacity redundancy. The profit levels for both wind farm and wind turbine manufacturers are relatively low. It is significant for Chinese wind power industry development to coordinate the supply chain of wind power in order to reduce O&M costs and increase revenues.

The present paper discusses product plus aftermarket service contract design on the background of closed-loop product service chain and uncertain equipment demand using revenue sharing contract model.

If centralized decision making is assumed, the authors find that the wind turbine order increases as the aftermarket service effort level and aftermarket service profit increase; aftermarket service effort level is positively correlative to the service efficiency. On the other hand, if decentralized decision making is assumed, the wind turbine order increases as share of the aftermarket service chain by manufacturer to wind farm increases and share of product supply chain by wind farm to manufacturer decreases. The optimal effort level of wind farm increases as the share of aftermarket service chain increases while the optimal effort level of the manufacturer is a concave function of share of aftermarket service chain if service quality linear correlates with effort level. Meanwhile, the authors find that the revenues of the product supply chain and aftermarket service chain have a concave relationship. This relationship is not affected by the format of relationship between service quality and effort level (linear or exponential).

The results could potentially be used to provide the wind turbine manufacturer with a greater profit space and satisfy wind farm’s equipment maintenance demand at the same time. It can also guide the practice of revenue sharing in the aftermarket service and manufacturing servitization.

In this model, the authors assumed that both the forward revenue sharing of power generation by wind farm to manufacturer and the backward revenue sharing of maintenance service by the manufacturer to wind farm exist in closed-loop product service chain. Then the authors discussed channel coordination of such cross-revenue sharing contract.

Acquiring knowledge‐intensive firms in order to gain access to their knowledge to innovate is not a strategy to achieve easily. Knowledge acquisitions demand that organizations integrate various dispersed knowledge‐based resources and thus share knowledge to innovate. However, despite the growing number of knowledge acquisitions an understanding regarding these knowledge sharing processes has remained absent. This paper argues that having an acquisition reconfiguration capability can be seen as a distinctive knowledge sharing ability of successful firms. The purpose of this paper is therefore to reveal the building blocks of such an acquisition reconfiguration capability in order to understand how to manage more successful knowledge acquisitions.

The approach of the research is to the review relevant literature while addressing two questions: “Which mechanisms, practices, and functions enable post‐acquisition knowledge sharing?”, and “How can these mechanisms, practices, and functions enable the creation of an acquisition reconfiguration capability in order to enable more successful knowledge acquisition?”.

Several propositions regarding the building blocks of an acquisition reconfiguration capability are given. First, it is argued that having prior acquisition experience will positively affect post‐acquisition knowledge sharing. Second, various acquisition‐specific tools and functions affect post‐acquisition knowledge sharing and mediate the effect of acquisition experience. Finally, knowledge management tools and practices enhance post‐acquisition knowledge sharing.

This study is, to the authors' knowledge, one of the first to focus on the underlying mechanisms and practices that affect post‐acquisition knowledge sharing and thus the building blocks of an acquisition reconfiguration capability.

This paper aims to focus on supply chain visibility in practice and to suggest ways to improve the supply chain performance through information sharing.

A case study exploring the current state of visibility in the demand‐supply network of an original equipment manufacturing company was carried out. The goal was to understand how a manufacturing company and its suppliers can benefit from incremental demand information sources. Data were collected through interviews and data analyses and focused on an end‐to‐end view of demand information. The most relevant information uses were tested in pilot projects. A literature review on demand information sources and benefits of visibility was conducted.

On the basis of the case results and a literature survey, five proposals on how to improve visibility are presented. They suggest that only information that improves supply chain performance should be shared, demand‐supply planning processes be stabilized and synchronized, different demand data sources should be used in parallel, customer collaboration offers a wider view to demand, and that suppliers' need for demand information differs from those of downstream actors.

The paper proposes solutions to managers on how they can benefit from improved access to demand information.

The paper shows, via case study and literature review, how information sharing can improve supply chain performance.

In difficult geographical zones (mountain, intra-cities areas, etc.), many shippers, from small and medium enterprises to individuals, may demand delivery of different food products (fresh, refrigerated, frozen, etc.) in small quantities. On the other side, carrier companies wish to use their vehicles optimally. Taking into account the perishability constraints (short-shelflife, temperature limits, etc.) of the transported food products and environmental constraints (pollution, carbon impact) while consolidating multiple kinds of food products to use vehicles optimally is not achieved by current transportation planning solutions. The purpose of this paper is to present an interoperable solution of a marketplace, formed by shippers and carriers, dedicated to the schedule of food transport orders.

This transportation planning system named Interoperable-Pathfinder, Order, Vehicle, Environment and Supervisor (I-POVES) is an interoperable multi-agent system, based on the SCEP (supervisor, customer, environment and producer) model (Archimede and Coudert, 2001). Ontologies are developed to create the planning marketplace comprising demands and offers from different sources (multiple shippers and carriers).

A hierarchy ontology for food products. A transporter system ontology. A global ontology that contains all shared concepts used by local ontologies of both shippers and carriers. I-POVES an interoperable model, which facilitates collaboration between carriers and their shippers through its active agents.

I-POVES is tested on a case study from the TECCAS Poctefa project, comprising transport and food companies from both sides of the Pyrenees (France and Spain).

There has been much work in the literature on the delivery of products, but very few on the delivery of food products. Work related to delivery of food products focuses mostly on timely delivery for avoiding its wastage. In this paper, constraints related to food products and to environment (pollution and carbon impact) of transport resources are taken into account while planning the delivery.

This research aims at investigating the role of certain factors in organizational culture in the success of knowledge sharing. Such factors as interpersonal trust, communication between staff, information systems, rewards and organization structure play an important role in defining the relationships between staff and in turn, providing possibilities to break obstacles to knowledge sharing. This research is intended to contribute in helping businesses understand the essential role of organizational culture in nourishing knowledge and spreading it in order to become leaders in utilizing their know‐how and enjoying prosperity thereafter.

The conclusions of this study are based on interpreting the results of a survey and a number of interviews with staff from various organizations in Bahrain from the public and private sectors.

The research findings indicate that trust, communication, information systems, rewards and organization structure are positively related to knowledge sharing in organizations.

The authors believe that further research is required to address governmental sector institutions, where organizational politics dominate a role in hoarding knowledge, through such methods as case studies and observation.

Previous research indicated that the Bahraini society is influenced by traditions of household, tribe, and especially religion of the Arab and Islamic world. These factors define people's beliefs and behaviours, and thus exercise strong influence in the performance of business organizations. This study is motivated by the desire to explore the role of the national organizational culture on knowledge sharing, which may be different from previous studies conducted abroad.