Collaborative Model on the Agro-Industrial Supply Chain of Cocoa

Abstract

Due to globalization and extreme competition in today’s economy, knowledge management that is a systematic management of industries’ knowledge assets for creating value and strategies of the organization plays an important role in finding out new strategies in the supply chain for interacting and satisfying the customers’ demand. Consequently, the current business models are continuously developing, incorporating new trends, new industrial areas, and even new models. In this paper, the authors propose a bi-level optimization model for producer and collection centers to achieve maximum profits of the channel members. In bi-level optimization, collection points are the leaders, and producers are the followers of the strategies taken by the collection points. The profits of the channel members are maximized using General Algebraic Modeling System software. Moreover, Shapley value of game theory approach is applied for coalition of the members in collaborative system, and it is compared with bi-level optimization based on data collected from agro-industry of cocoa. The best way to distribute the profits among the participants is determined by using Microsoft Excel and Java as a programming language. The final results indicate that higher profits are obtained in a collaborative system than in an individual system. © 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.