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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2010.04.047 Byline: Jean-Claude Hennet (a), Sonia Mahjoub (a)(b) Keywords: Supply chain; Cooperative game theory; Coalitions; Linear programming; Duality Abstract: The design of a supply chain network can be interpreted as a coalition formation problem in a cooperative game theory and formulated as a linear production game (LPG). The companies that are members of the optimal coalition share their manufacturing assets and resources to produce a set of end-products and globally maximize their profits by selling them in a market. This paper investigates the possibility of combining the requirement of coalition stability with a fair allocation of profits to the participants. It is shown that, in general, the purely competitive allocation mechanism does not exhibit the property of fairness. A technique is proposed to construct a stable and fair allocation system when the core of the game does not exclusively contain a set of competitive allocations. Author Affiliation: (a) LSIS, CNRS-UMR 6168, Universite Paul Cezanne, Faculte Saint JerA[acute accent]me, Avenue Escadrille Normandie Niemen, 13397 Marseille Cedex 20, France (b) FIESTA, ISG Tunis, 41 rue de la liberte, 2000 Le Bardo, Tunisia Article History: Received 25 June 2009; Accepted 28 April 2010