Title: A comparative study of international automobile sourcing strategies based on stochastic process analysis

Authors: Li Zhu, Lothar Schulze, Lindu Zhao

Addresses: College of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China. ' College of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China; Department Planning and Controlling of Warehouse and Transport Systems (PSLT), Leibniz University Hannover, D-30167 Hannover, Germany. ' College of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China; Department Planning and Controlling of Warehouse and Transport Systems (PSLT), Leibniz University Hannover, D-30167 Hannover, Germany

Abstract: In global supply chains, increasing global sourcing costs have urged multinational automotive manufacturing firms to develop competitive international sourcing strategies. Faced with different international sourcing strategies between Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers in the automotive industry, this paper focuses on the comparative study of two popular ones (Risk Sharing or RS and Early Commitment or EC) and then tries to find out which of these is a better strategy in different situations. Using the real-options approach, the valuation models of the RS and EC sourcing strategies are established. By means of the binomial lattice technique depicting the uncertain exchange rate factor, we present the numerical simulation and sensitivity analysis of two Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP) problems. The results of our comparison analysis suggest that the EC sourcing strategy is better than its RS counterpart, especially when the foreign exchange rate is highly volatile in the global automobile supply chain.

Keywords: global supply chains; global sourcing; sourcing strategy; automobile industry; uncertain exchange rates; uncertainty; automotive sourcing; supply chain management; SCM; automotive manufacturing; automotive supply chains; international sourcing; risk sharing; early commitment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2009.026777

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2009 Vol.5 No.6, pp.817 - 831

Published online: 26 Jun 2009 *

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