Risk analysis of commitment-option contracts with forecast updates

Abstract

The standard treatment of supply chain models largely focuses on the optimization of the expected value of a given cost or profit measure. Due to highly uncertain supply and demand conditions, the use of the expected objective measure may not be justified. This article studies a class of commitment-option supply contracts in a mean-variance framework. With structure properties established it is shown that a mean-variance trade-off analysis with advanced reservation can be carried out. Moreover, it is indicated how the corresponding contract decisions differ from decisions for optimizing an expected objective value. © 2011 "IIE".