Retailers’ Order Strategies in Transshipments in Disruption Risks of Supply Chains

This article investigates the order problem in a two-stage supply chain consisting of retailers, primary suppliers and backup suppliers. From retailers’ perspectives, the optimal offering strategies in unidirectional transshipments are analyzed on the basis of disruption risks in supply chains. With a focus on retailers’ profits, it develops the decision model of retailers’ orders in the dual sourcing mode and in the mode of capacity options, to maximize the retailers’ expected profits. The simulation shows that retailers’ optimal order decisions are not correlated with the joint disruption probability in the two order modes without service constraints; retailers’ optimal decisions are influenced by the joint disruption probability in the two order modes with service constraints, and the impact of the joint disruption probability of the primary suppliers’ optimal order from retailers differs in the two modes. Retailers’ order decisions in respect of backup suppliers are more sensitive to the changing volumes of transshipments. The contribution of this article is the impact of main parameters on retailers’ decisions, providing some guidance for enterprises to make order decisions.