Search

Consumption compensation is the driving force for motivating each supply chain link to set up information nodes, which is of great significance for promoting informatization, modernization, transformation, and upgrading of the supply chain system. This study simulates the evolution process of strategic selection for each supply chain link to set information nodes independently or collectively under the unconstrained government rewards conditions and punishments. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) When each link in the supply chain provides source tracing information independently, the vendor chooses to set up information nodes for the links with large information cost compensation coefficients. (2) When the vendor provides source tracing information cooperatively if the collaborative benefit is less than the cooperation cost, the information node will be set to the link with the large compensation coefficient. If not, information nodes will be set in each link. (3) Under the government incentive mechanism, enterprises are willing to cooperate. The punishment mechanism helps avoid situations where neither side sets up information nodes. The compensation coefficient is a prerequisite for mechanisms to work.

Although recent decades have witnessed rapid development of e-commerce, direct sale of time-sensitive commodities on e-commerce platforms still faces significant challenges due to the dilemma between short delivery time and high delivery costs. To alleviate these challenges, manufacturers with online retailing operations have attempted to cooperate with offline retailers by using an “order-online, pickup-offline” (OOPO) strategy. To study the problem of effectively implementing the OOPO strategy for time-sensitive commodities, we consider a mechanism under which the manufacturer pays the retailers a cooperative service fee to ensure delivery coordination between the online and offline channels. We develop Stackelberg game-theoretic models to compare the profits of both delivery channels before and after the implementation of the OOPO strategy. By analyzing the models, we derive a feasible range on the cooperative service fee such that both channels are more profitable with the implementation. We further examine the plausibility of implementing the strategy when both channels are required to charge the same price on the commodities, which can lead to both channel coordination and pricing coordination.

Blockchain is commonly considered a potential disruptive technology. Moreover, the healthcare industry has experienced rapid growth in the adoption of health information technology, such as electronic health records and electronic medical records. To guarantee data privacy and data security as well as to harness the value of health data, the concept of Health Data Bank (HDB) is proposed. In this study, HDB is defined as an integrated health data service institution, which bears no “ownership” of health data and operates health data under the principal–agent model. This study first comprehensively reviews the main characters of blockchain and identifies the block-chain-based healthcare industry projects and startups in the areas of health insurance, pharmacy, and medical treatment. Then, we analyze the fundamental principles of HDB and point out four challenges faced by HDB’s sustainable development: (1) privacy protection and interoperability of health data; (2) data rights; (3) health data supervision; (4) and willingness to share health data. We also analyze the important benefits of blockchain adoption in HDB. Furthermore, three application scenarios including distributed storage of health data, smart-contract-based healthcare service mode, and consensus-algorithm-based incentive policy are proposed to shed light on HDB-based healthcare service mode. In the end, this study offers insights into potential research directions and challenges.

Under the new global situation of the world pattern, the global industrial chain and supply chain are being reconstructed, and the safe and stable operation is facing a large number of risks and challenges. As the internal driving force of the reconstruction of the global supply chain, key core technologies have become an important part of world economic competition. This paper addresses the issue that what product manufacturer should do to prevent the risk of key core technology outage in the context of international competition. This paper first constructs a duopoly Hotelling model of two competitive products from two countries and the game models under different circumstances where enterprises in the core technology outage whether or not implement the independent research and development (IR&D). We establish four scenarios: non-IR&D benchmark before and after technology outage, IR&D before and after technology outage. Furthermore, outage risk is evaluated by comparing the impact of outage initiated by the government on the profit change of the initiator country firms and the firm in which supply is cut off. When the enterprises in technology outage implement IR&D, we compare the scale of profit changes of enterprises between the two countries and analyze the effectiveness of IR&D investment of enterprises in the country suffering from technology outage to cope with the technology outage risk. Our analysis indicates that: outage maybe make the country that initiates the core technology outage lose more profits and the core technology country's profit change may be bigger than the country investing IR&D. Moreover, the enterprise's IR&D investment can establish certain game space and rights for their country. When the country can reduce technological disadvantages, IR&D strategy, to some extent, can reduce the urgency due to the technology outage risk and weaken the absolute control from the rival country that initiates the technology outage.

ABSTRACTBackground:The huge gap in adolescent human papillomavirus (HPV) uptake between China (< 2%) and developed countries (> 60%) indicates the necessity of comprehensive examination on the modifiable factors for parents’ decision-making. The present study investigated parental perceptions of HPV vaccination for children in China from a socio-economic perspective.Methods: Parents of 9-to-14-year-old adolescents who understood the HPV vaccination (n = 925) completed our questionnaire survey in Fall 2017. Based on the structural equation modeling, we examined the relationship among knowledge, awareness, and intentions of 20 items by 7-point Likert scale, the moderating effects also were tested among 5 socioeconomic variables.Results: Parents of female students have more positive intention about the HPV vaccination than male students’ parents (3.74 vs 2.80, p < 0.001). Parents of 12–14-years old students have higher average scores in knowledge (p = 0.006) and intention (p < 0.001) than that of 9–11-years old students’ parents. The average score of mothers on knowledge (p = 0.018) and awareness (p < 0.001) was lower than that of fathers. The elder parents (≥ 50 years) performed significantly better on knowledge (p < 0.001) and awareness (p < 0.001) than the other two subgroups. Annual household income is an important factor in determining the knowledge (p = 0.0017), awareness (p < 0.001), and intention (p < 0.001). Knowledge and awareness were considered as the positive determinant of intention, and awareness was partial mediator. Child gender (P = 0.046), child age (P = 0.004), parent gender (P = 0.043) and parental age (P = 0.021) were significant moderators.Conclusion: To improve the acceptability of HPV vaccination among Chinese adolescents, policymakers should develop positive strategies for their parents.

•Trust influence the behavior intention of elderly to adopt general practitioner.•Adoption behavior has increased the medical satisfaction of elderly.•Promotion policies should focus on the trust, perceived utility, and satisfaction.

ABSTRACTParental behavioral intentions play a key role in children vaccination. The present study looks at how parental expectations for the vaccination influence their attitudes and behavioral intentions toward children’s immunization. The theoretical model is developed on TPB model and empirically tested with sample data from 380 children aged 0–7 years in mainland China. The structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis were used in the model to demonstrate the impact of the vaccination services quality, vaccination promotions and public opinions on attitudes and vaccination behavioral intention. Results support the study’s hypotheses and indicate that Vaccination Services Quality (VSQ), Vaccination Promotions (VAP) and Public Opinions (PUO) have positive effects on Attitudes (ATT) and Vaccination Behavioral Intention (VAI), VSQ has the strongest standardized path (.594) while PUO has the least influence (.131), and Attitude is complete mediation in all paths. Attitude is key factor that determine the parental behavioral intentions, and the internal perception comes from the vaccination services quality and the external influence comes from the social environment affect the parental attitude. Governments should implement effective policies and improve vaccination services quantity to eliminate parental misunderstandings.

To identify the changing of health policy decisions and Doctor–Patient relationship in different periods in China during 67 years (1949–2016).

This article studies how to allocate a scare emergency medical resource at the beginning of large-scale disaster. One salient problem in emergency rescue is how to coordinate the resource among injuries of different degrees in different periods. The injuries are classified into three levels and given different priorities. Waiting cost with resources shortage, deteriorated cost with delay and transferring cost to other hospitals are introduced into the decision-making process. Basing on incorporating the costs into revenue function, a Markov decision process (MDP) model is proposed to establish the optimal action policies in different periods. A dynamic algorithm is proposed to derive the optimal solution. With a numerical experiment, the improvement of MDP is displayed and some managerial suggestions are also provided.

Disasters always cause tremendous injuries and medical resources demands in a short period, while improving resilience of hospital network can help to quickly recover from disruptions. Based on biological cell elasticity theory, this paper assimilates the hospital network to the cellular tissue. And we define an indicator of multi-hospitals network resilience that quantifies the ability of hospital network to react to the medical resources demand disruptions due to natural or human-caused disaster. And a collaborative scheduling model of resources in the network is put forward as the reactive strategy to improve the resilience of the hospitals network against disasters. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the resilience concept and assess the effectiveness of the collaborative scheduling.

Our research is aimed at developing a quantitative approach for assessing predicted supply chain resilience based on structural evolution against random supply disruptions. The paper begins by identifying a conceptual supply chain resilience model, which extends the concept of the disaster resilience triangle by adding the third metric – redundancy. Based on this conceptual model, a measurement model considering structural evolution is proposed as an analytic measure of supply chain resilience. The structural evolution mechanism results from the two fundamental abilities according to cell resilience theory, i.e. the self-adaption ability and the self-recovery ability. Finally, simulation is adopted to demonstrate the measurement model of predicted supply chain resilience.

As supply chains are becoming more dependent upon suppliers, the importance of using backup supply is receiving increasing attention. The objective of this paper is to develop a set of models to facilitate manufacturers/buyers’ decision as to when to use a backup supply if the main supply source is interrupted. The authors take a number of cost factors such as production, purchasing and inventory holding during the disruption cycle into consideration. The impacts of the duration and the magnitude of the main supplier’s breakdown are explicitly studied, and the effect of demand change during disruption is also examined. Numerical illustrations are given to show the applications of the decision-making models developed in the paper.

In this paper, a unique forecasting model for the demand of emergency resources based on epidemic diffusion rule is constructed. We find that both the pure point-to-point delivery mode (PTP) and the pure multi-depot, multiple travelling salesmen delivery system (MMTS) are difficult to operate in an actual emergency situation. Thus, we propose a mixed-collaborative distribution mode, which can equilibrate the contradiction between these two pure modes. A special time window for such a mixed-collaborative mode is designed. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) is adopted to solve the optimisation model. At last, we compare it with these two pure distribution modes from both aspects of total distance and timeliness.

To find the efficient logistics strategy for the anthrax attack, the anthrax progression model and emergency logistics model under the traditional and collaboration modes are constructed based on the System Dynamics (SD) approach. Then, a combination mode that integrates the two modes is proposed. Through the simulation, we analysed some factors which can affect the rescue effect, and we studied which mode is the best logistics strategy response to the anthrax attacks. This study provides insights for the decision-makers who cope with the emergency events, such as the bioterrorists attacks.

Unlike logistics management in which all the activities are triggered based on customer orders, emergency logistics network in an anti-bioterrorism system is triggered based on the epidemic diffusion network. The first important step for efficient emergency rescue is to depict the time-varying demand for emergency resources. In this article, two different epidemic diffusion models (SIQRS, SEIQRS) are analysed based on a small-world network. Thus, threshold of the epidemic diffusion and key parameters for controlling the epidemic diffusion are obtained. Then we propose a time-varying forecasting model for the demand for emergency resources in the epidemic area and we decompose the entire emergency rescue process into three mutually correlated substages. To each substage, we present a corresponding suggestion for emergency distribution based on the dynamic demand rule. Generally, these works can provide some guidelines for decision makers when coping with emergency rescue problems pertinent to bioterrorism.

In this paper, the authors focus on examining the coordination mechanisms for a two-stage supply chain comprising one supplier and one retailer. The authors consider such a channel relationship that the transaction quantity between the two members is sensitive to the supplier’s inventory level and that the supplier’s unit inventory holding cost has a linear stepwise structure. They devise a coordinated revenue-sharing contract with bargaining so that each party’s respective profit is better than that resulted from the simple sequential optimization mechanism. The key contract parameters, namely the supplier’s inventory level and the retailer’s revenue-sharing fraction, are obtained and analyzed. Numerical illustrations of the contracts are given and shed lights on how the supply chain should coordinate in order to gain better performance.

The automation of transportation in the production, trade and service sectors is a key point in the optimisation of intralogistics. For this task, Automated Guided Vehicle Systems (AGVS) provide special benefits. Applications exist in all fields of industry and trade. Typical examples are the use in assembly lines, warehouses, order picking systems and production plants. Based on the AGVS-Statistic Europe, which is created and administrated by the Department of Planning and Controlling of Warehouse and Transport Systems of the University of Hannover, the main application of AGVS and the sectors in which they are used are analysed. Furthermore, this paper discusses the development of AGVS in China. The first successful implementations as well as the future trends and possibilities are presented.