Motivated by the recent backshoring trend, this paper studies a sourcing game where competing firms may choose between efficient sourcing (e.g., sourcing from overseas) and responsive sourcing (e.g., ...sourcing from a home country). Efficient sourcing usually provides a cost advantage, whereas responsive sourcing allows a firm to obtain more accurate demand information when making procurement decisions. By characterizing the equilibrium outcome, we find some interesting results driven by the strategic interaction between the firms. First, a firm may still use efficient sourcing in equilibrium even when the cost advantage associated with efficient sourcing does not exist. This is because the firm can dampen competition by reducing the correlation between its own demand information and the competitor's. Second, a cost hike in efficient sourcing (e.g., the rising labor cost in Asia) may benefit all the firms in the industry. The reason is that the cost hike may alleviate competition by inducing a new equilibrium sourcing structure. This paper also sheds some light on the recent backshoring trend. First, our analysis indicates that more firms will shift from efficient sourcing to responsive sourcing in equilibrium (i.e., backshore) if the market size shrinks, the demand becomes more volatile, or the sourcing costs rise simultaneously. Second, a firm's backshoring behavior reduces the competition on the cost dimension, but it also has an ambiguous informational impact on the other firms in the market. In particular, some firms may benefit from increased correlation of their demand information under Cournot competition with substitutable products. Overall, the backshoring behavior can be beneficial to all the firms sticking to their original sourcing strategies under certain conditions.
This paper was accepted by Martin Lariviere, operations management
.
Bundling strategies have been widely adopted by online retail platforms that use agency selling, where suppliers pay a commission fee to the platform to gain access and sell directly to consumers. We ...study the optimal bundling strategy for a retail platform through which two independent suppliers distribute their products. The suppliers first set their product prices, and, subsequently, the platform decides whether to offer the two products as a bundle and, if so, the price of the bundled product. By analyzing a two‐stage Stackelberg game, we find that the platform adopts the bundling strategy only when the commission rate and the product prices are sufficiently high. The existence of the bundling option does not affect the suppliers’ optimal pricing decisions if the product costs are either above a high threshold or below a low threshold. However, the suppliers may strategically raise the retail prices to induce the platform to offer bundled products when the marginal costs are in the medium range. The strategic interaction between the platform and suppliers leads to interesting insights into the bundling problem. For example, the retail platform may not prefer a high commission rate (i.e., a greater bargaining power) if the platform has the option to provide the bundled product. Additionally, the platform having even the possibility of bundling may hurt the platform's profit, but it always benefits the suppliers.
Smart manufacturing is the core idea of the fourth industrial evolution. For a smart manufacturing shop floor, real-time monitoring, simulation and prediction of manufacturing operations are vital to ...improve the production efficiency and flexibility. In this paper, the Cyber-Physical System (CPS) and Digital Twin technologies are introduced to build the interconnection and interoperability of a physical shop floor and corresponding cybershop floor. A Digital Twin-based Cyber-Physical Production System (DT-CPPS) is further established, and the configuring mechanism, operating mechanism and real-time data-driven operations control of DT-CPPS are discussed in detail. It is expected that DT-CPPS will provide the basis for shop floors to march towards smart manufacturing.
This paper studies the role of product availability in attracting consumer demand. We start with a newsvendor model, but additionally assume that stockouts are costly to consumers. The seller sets an ...observable price and an unobservable stocking quantity. Consumers anticipate the likelihood of stockouts and determine whether to visit the seller. We characterize the rational expectations equilibrium in this game. We propose two strategies that the seller can use to improve profits: (i) commitment (i.e., the seller, ex ante, commits to a particular quantity) and (ii) availability guarantees (i.e., the seller promises to compensate consumers, ex post, if the product is out of stock). Interestingly, the seller has an incentive to overcompensate consumers during stockouts, relative to the first-best benchmark under which social welfare is maximized. We find that first-best outcomes do not arise in equilibrium, but can be supported when the seller uses a combination of commitment and availability guarantees. Finally, we examine the robustness of these conclusions by extending our analysis to incorporate dynamic learning, multiple products, and consumer heterogeneity.
This paper studies firms' carbon emissions abatement and pricing strategies in a competitive market when facing the pressure from both emissions trading price and consumer carbon awareness. We ...develop a duopoly game and investigate how problem parameters affect the equilibrium outcome. We find that carbon price and consumer awareness level have an additive effect on a firm's emissions abatement effort. However, these two factors have different implications for the firms' prices and profits. In particular, the firms' prices first decrease and then increase with consumer awareness level, while the firms' profits first decrease and then increase with carbon price when there is a moderate emissions cap. From both the consumers' and the firms' standpoints, an appropriate emissions abatement strategy for the central planner is to first push up the carbon price and then promote consumer carbon awareness. Such a strategy provides incentives for firms to invest in carbon abatement activities, without causing drastic changes to product prices and firm profits. Finally, we generalize the base model to consider more than two firms. It has been found that raising carbon price may be a better policy choice than promoting consumer awareness for the central planner who aims at reducing carbon emissions in various industries with different competition levels.
•Carbon price and consumer awareness have an additive effect on emissions abatement.•Product prices first decrease and then increase in consumer awareness level.•Firms' profits first decrease and then increase in carbon price under moderate cap.•It is suggested to first push up carbon price and then promote consumer awareness.•Raising carbon price may be a better policy choice than promoting consumer awareness.
•Co3O4/CdO composite nanospheres were firstly synthesized.•They showed a high capacitance of 351 F g−1 at 2 A g−1.•84.9% of the original capacitance was retained from 2 to 10 A g−1.
For the first ...time, Co3O4/CdO composite nanospheres were synthesized using a simple solvothermal method. During electrochemical study, Co3O4/CdO nanospheres showed a high capacitance of 351 F g−1, and 84.9% of the original capacitance was also reached from 2 to 10 A g−1, indicating an excellent rate performance. The asymmetric supercapacitor containing Co3O4/CdO nanospheres exhibited high capacitance of 109.4 F g−1 at 1 A g−1. The fabricated Co3O4/CdO nanospheres were promising alternatives for highly performed supercapacitors.
The information asymmetry phenomenon widely exists in production management decisions due to the latency of manufacturing data transmissions. Also, stochastic events on the physical production site ...will result in information asymmetry, which may lead to inconsistency between current execution and previous resource allocation plans. It is meaningful and important for developing an information model based on the Internet of Manufacturing Things to timely and actively adjust the scheduling strategy to meet the symmetry requirements of the production execution process. Based on the digital twin data collected from the workshop, a proactive job-shop scheduling strategy was discussed in this paper. Firstly, the mechanism for the influence of delayed local operations on makespan was deduced. Then, a framework for implementing the proactive job-shop scheduling strategy was proposed. Coordination point was used to determine the adjustment interval of local operations; right-shift rule with delay time constraints was used to adjust the unprocessed operation sequences on machines. Finally, the examples including 6*6 (6 jobs, 6 machines) and 20*40 (20 jobs, 40 machines) were presented to verify the effectiveness and scalability of the proposed method. It can be predicted that the proactive scheduling strategy provides the online decisions for the efficient and smooth execution of the digital twin-driven workshop production.
Human periodontal ligament (PDL) cells underwent apoptosis after mechanical stretch loading. However, the exact signalling pathway remains unknown. This study aimed to elucidate how the apoptotic ...caspases functioned in the cyclic stretch-induced apoptosis in human PDL cells.
In the present study, 20% cyclic stretch was selected to load the cells for 6 or 24 h. The following parameters were analyzed: apoptotic rates, the protein levels of caspase-3, -7, -8 and -9 and the activities of caspase-8 and -9. Subsequently, the influences of caspase-8 and caspase-9 inhibitors on the apoptotic rate and the protein level of the activated caspase-3 were assessed as well.
The apoptotic rates increased in response to cyclic stretch, but the cells entered different apoptotic stages after 6 and 24 h stretches. Caspase-3, -7, -8 and -9 were all activated after stretch loading. The stretch-induced apoptosis and the protein level of the activated caspase-3 were inhibited after inhibiting both caspase-8 and caspase-9 in both 6 and 24 h stretched cells and after inhibiting caspase-9 in 24 h stretched cells.
Caspase-8 and -9 functioned differently at different apoptotic stages in human PDL cells after cyclic stretch.
Bone regeneration disorders are a significant problem in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) are recognized as ideal seed cells for tissue engineering because ...they can stimulate osteogenesis during bone regeneration. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the osteogenic potential of BMSCs derived from type 2 diabetic rats and the pathogenic characteristics of dysfunctional BMSCs that affect osteogenesis. BMSCs were isolated from normal and high-fat diet+streptozotocin-induced type 2 diabetic rats. Cell metabolic activity, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, mineralization and osteogenic gene expression were reduced in the type 2 diabetic rat BMSCs. The expression levels of Wnt signaling genes, such as β-catenin, cyclin D1 and c-myc, were also significantly decreased in the type 2 diabetic rat BMSCs, but the expression of GSK3β remained unchanged. The derived BMSCs were cultured on calcium phosphate cement (CPC) scaffolds and placed subcutaneously into nude mice for eight weeks; they were detected at a low level in newly formed bone. The osteogenic potential of the type 2 diabetic rat BMSCs was not impaired by the culture environment, but it was impaired by inhibition of the Wnt signaling pathway, likely due to an insufficient accumulation of β-catenin rather than because of GSK3β stimulation. Using BMSCs derived from diabetic subjects could offer an alternative method of regenerating bone together with the use of supplementary growth factors to stimulate the Wnt signaling pathway.
Purpose
We aimed to explore whether the preoperative prognostic nutritional index (PNI) could be an indicator of prognostic outcomes in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients.
Methods
A systematic review ...and meta-analysis was conducted using the PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science databases. All original comparative studies published in English that were related to a high PNI versus a low PNI in CRC patients were included.
Results
A total of 10 studies involving 6372 patients were included in our meta-analysis. Our overall analysis indicated that the low-PNI group had a significantly reduced overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.87, 95% CI = 1.45–2.42,
P
< 0.01), cancer-specific survival (HR = 1.53, 95% CI = 1.07–2.19,
P
= 0.02), and disease-free survival (HR = 1.67, 95% CI = 1.23–2.26,
P
< 0.01) compared with the high-PNI group. Furthermore, our subgroup results indicated that a high PNI could be a significant indicator of improved OS in TNM stage II (HR = 1.93, 95% CI = 1.29–2.90,
P
< 0.01) and III (HR = 1.71, 95% CI = 1.25–2.34,
P
< 0.01), and a similar trend in TNM stage I or IV could also be observed though without statistical significance. Regarding postoperative complications, our pooled results indicated that the low-PNI group had a significantly increased incidence of total and severe postoperative complications.
Conclusions
Our findings indicated that CRC patients with a preoperative high PNI had a significantly improved OS. However, almost only Asian CRC patients were included based on current issue.
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