A hybrid approach to select the best sourcing policy using stochastic programming

Abstract Supply contracts are known as the communication link among supply chain members. As sourcing of required goods is a challenging issue for supply chain members, different sourcing types for different market conditions have been presented in the literature. However, the uncertain price condition has not been much focused in the previous studies, and in the limited works on this issue the correlation between the periods has been ignored. In this paper, sourcing policies are analyzed in a multi-period system in which price and demand follow a Geometric Brownian Motion with drift. Wholesale contract, option contract, and purchase from the spot market are considered as the sourcing alternatives for the buyer. This paper applies the stochastic programming approach to model these three types of sourcing based upon price and demand uncertainties. Afterwards, a hybrid supply model of these sourcing types is developed. By a numerical example, the simulation results of the developed models reveal that each individual sourcing alternative can be selected as the best one in each price and demand behavior. The results also suggest that the proposed hybrid model dominates each of the individual sourcing types. Finally, the paper reports the effects of cost parameter alterations on the solution of the hybrid model through sensitivity analysis.