Masakatsu Mori

Proposal of application architecture in electronic commerce service between companies

This paper proposes the concept of a secure application architecture that helps a service provider to enterprise a business-to-business e-commerce service. Recently, there has been a paradigm shift to inter-enterprise integration. We have started a new service provider business for business media services that is based on two concepts: business process integration and high-grade security in response to variety types of cooperation. The infrastructure of this service can provide various services such as marketing, design, manufacturing, inspection, distribution, payment, and maintenance. In this paper, the proposed architecture is applied to a quotation support system that is used for three types of quotation in a procurement business, that is a specified, members, and general quotation. It will enable many companies to construct paper-less office systems easily and also to shorten the response time for quotations with documents like design specifications between buyers and vendors.

Risk-cost optimization for procurement planning in multi-tier supply chain by Pareto Local Search with relaxed acceptance criterion

We address a 2-objective optimization problem to minimize a retailer’s procurement cost and risk that is evaluated as recovery time of the retailer’s business after the procurement is suspended by a catastrophic event. In order to reduce the recovery time, the retailer needs to decentralize ordering to multiple suppliers and have contingency stock, which costs the retailer. In multi-tier supply chains, not only the retailer’s procurement plan but also their suppliers’ procurement plans affect the retailers’ risk and cost. Due to the huge combinations of their plans, it is difficult to find Pareto optimal solutions of the 2-objective optimization problem within a short space of time. We apply Pareto Local Search (PLS) based on heuristics to generate neighbors of a solution by changing suppliers’ plans in the closer tier to the retailer. The original PLS accepts the solutions that are nondominated neighbor solutions for the next search, but the acceptance criterion is too strict to find all Pareto optimal solutions. We relax the acceptance criterion in order to include dominated solutions whose Pareto rank is equal to or less than a threshold. The threshold is updated based on changes of Pareto rank during local searches.

An evaluation method of reduced procurement risks by decentralized ordering in supply chain

In supply chain, catastrophic disasters such as earthquakes may prevent procurements from suppliers, which causes losses in retailers. Decentralizing orders and urgent stocks can reduce the losses, but cost the retailer. And, the losses by the catastrophic disasters are uncertain. In order to support planning of decentralizing orders and urgent stocks, we propose the evaluation method of procurement risks that are Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) of the losses, which are often applied for a rare event causing a heavy loss. Because the uncertain procurement risk is reduced in return for the cost, the proposed method evaluates the decentralizing orders with the urgent stock based on real option approach.

Analysis of risk mitigation by decentralized ordering in multi-tier supply chain

We address developing the simulator for multi-tier supply chain to evaluate the effect of risk mitigation by decentralized ordering. A simulator for 2-tier supply chain has been developed through our research. Because the relationship between the suppliers in the multi-tier supply chain is similar to the relationship between the retailer and the supplier in the 2-tier supply chain. In order to realize the simulation for the multi-tier supply chain, we combine the simulator for the 2-tier supply chain with the functions of price decision and updating the probability distribution of the downtime of the suppliers. Applying the simulator to the multi-tier supply chain model, we discuss the effect of the risk mitigation by decentralized ordering.