Title: Milk procurement of a private dairy firm: an economic analysis

Authors: Priyanka Chaturvedi; Ashutosh Sarkar; Gautam C. Majumdar; Sarada P. Sarmah; Sidhartha S. Padhi

Addresses: MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA ' Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Kunnamangalam, Kozhikode, Kerala, 673570, India ' Department of Agriculture and Food Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India ' Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India ' Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Kunnamangalam, Kozhikode, Kerala, 673570, India

Abstract: In this paper, we study the milk procurement system of a private dairy firm that buys milk from two channels, namely from farmers and through intermediaries. The collected milk is processed into value-added products, such as butter, ghee, yoghurt etc. In India, milk is predominantly collected through cooperatives and most often the farmers are stakeholders of such cooperatives. Further, the intermediaries also sell their milk to the local market and hence, behave opportunistically. Therefore, availability of milk for the private dairy firm becomes critical and depends on market principles. The game played between the intermediary and the dairy has been modelled as a Stackellberg game and expressions for their optimal decisions are obtained. Based on data collected from a private dairy firm, we carried out numerical analysis to understand the behaviour of the intermediary and the dairy firm.

Keywords: supply chain; procurement; supply chain coordination; supply contract.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2018.094233

International Journal of Operational Research, 2018 Vol.33 No.1, pp.101 - 126

Received: 17 Jul 2015
Accepted: 19 Sep 2015

Published online: 23 Aug 2018 *

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