International Journal of Production Economics最新文献

{"title":"Generative AI in retail platform operations: Considering supplier effort exertion and consumer skepticism","authors":"Qiang Wang ,&nbsp;Xinran Dai ,&nbsp;Mingjun Li","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109870","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109870","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In recent years, a growing number of retail platforms have integrated generative artificial intelligence (GAI) technology into their operations, as exemplified by Amazon’s GAI-powered “Rufus” shopping assistant and JD.com’s “JD Jingyan” intelligent recommendation system. However, alongside the proliferation of AI applications, some consumers have grown skeptical about the reliability of GAI. Against this backdrop, it remains unclear whether retail platforms should adopt GAI and what impacts such adoption may exert on heterogeneous suppliers, consumer surplus, and social welfare. To investigate these issues, this paper develops theoretical stylized models and derives some key managerial implications. The findings indicate that the retail platform will inevitably adopt GAI, as any suppliers who make efforts to effectively utilize GAI will benefit the platform. Moreover, when the proportion of GAI-skeptical consumers is relatively small or the effort cost is sufficiently low, one supplier’s investment in GAI utilization compels the rival to follow suit, leading to mutual effort exertion as the Nash equilibrium. Conversely, one supplier’s effort will induce its competitor to enter the market without exerting effort, resulting in a Nash equilibrium where only one supplier invests in GAI utilization. Besides, a brand supplier is more likely to exert effort in leveraging GAI and exerts more efforts than an ordinary supplier, particularly when market competition intensifies. While the ordinary supplier may only outperform the brand supplier in effort when market competition is relatively subdued. Finally, we demonstrate that GAI adoption ultimately enhances both consumer surplus and social welfare.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109870"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of subcontracting on service systems with time-sensitive strategic customers","authors":"Myron Benioudakis","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2026.109920","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2026.109920","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We consider a service system consisting of a provider who offers a service in a make-to-order fashion to a market of potential customers, and a subcontractor who can be recruited to speed up the service process. The provider operates a Markovian queue at a standard service rate and charges customers a fixed fee upon joining. At each busy cycle, the provider offers a salary to a subcontractor in exchange for increasing the service rate. The subcontractor decides whether to accept the offer while incurring a labor cost per unit of time. Arriving customers, who are strategic and time-sensitive, cannot observe the system’s queue length or the implemented service policy. They have a service value upon completion and incur a waiting cost per unit of time. Based on their utility maximization, they make individual join-or-balk decisions, considering both the behavior of other customers and the subcontractor’s strategic involvement.</div><div>We derive the equilibrium demand of customers as a response to the subcontractor’s commitment rate using a two-dimensional continuous-time Markov Chain. We define the collaboration regions based on salary thresholds, highlighting the reservation salaries that ensure collaboration between the two parties. Finally, using a Stackelberg game framework, we show that the subcontractor does not always opt for full commitment. When the provider relies less on subcontractor assistance, the subcontractor strategically prefers partial commitment, balancing the trade-off between idle periods and longer busy periods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109920"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mediation effects in blockchain technology adoption for social sustainability: Pre- and post-adoption analysis of existing and future socially sustainable supply chains","authors":"Ali Esfahbodi,&nbsp;Hakeem Omolade Sunmola","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109868","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109868","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While blockchain technology offers promising potential for enhancing social sustainability in supply chains, its adoption and effective utilisation remain underexplored. This study, grounded in the dynamic capabilities view, investigates the role of social orientation and the cognitive mechanism of Perceived Usefulness in driving blockchain technology adoption, and its subsequent impact on future social practices and social performance across both pre- and post-adoption phases. Using a quantitative survey of UK manufacturing organisations, this study examines the mediating effects of existing social practices in the pre-adoption phase and future social practices in the post-adoption phase. Findings reveal that while social orientation positively influences blockchain adoption, this effect is partially mediated by existing social practices. Furthermore, blockchain implementation acts as a catalyst for the adoption of future social practices, which in turn mediates its impact on social performance. This study contributes to the operations and supply chain management body of literature by: 1) providing empirical evidence for the mediating role of social practices in the relationship between social orientation, blockchain adoption, and social performance; 2) highlighting the dynamic interplay between existing and future social practices in shaping the adoption and impact of blockchain technology, adopting a multi-stage approach that considers both pre- and post-adoption phases; and 3) providing managers with the strategic tool Blockchain Technology for Social Sustainability (BTSS) for leveraging blockchain for social sustainability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109868"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Time-dependent integrated production and outbound distribution scheduling with multiple cold chain products considering carbon emissions","authors":"Feng Wang,&nbsp;Hongguang Bo","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109836","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109836","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sustainable urban development urgently requires the implementation of advanced low-carbon transportation strategies, with emissions from cold chain product transportation being particularly significant. Cold chain products are essential to modern society, their perishable nature greatly increases the complexity of production and distribution planning. Enterprises typically organize production around order-defined delivery dates to ensure product freshness and customer satisfaction, distributing products immediately to minimize value loss and energy waste. These challenges are further amplified under time-varying operational conditions. To address this issue, we propose a three-objective mathematical optimisation model for low-carbon operations that maximize product freshness and customer satisfaction while minimizing costs. This model integrates various factors such as employee time-varying processing efficiency during the production stage, the time-varying vehicle speed during the distribution stage, and the influence of dynamic speed and load on carbon emissions. Given the NP-hard nature of the proposed model, a hybrid algorithm based on variable neighbourhood search (VNS) and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-III (NSGA-III) is designed to solve it. Numerical experiments and analyses demonstrate that the proposed model and algorithm substantially improve scheduling efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. The research results not only deepen and extend the theory of integrated production and outbound distribution scheduling under time-varying condition but also provide a scientific and reasonable approach for guiding cold chain enterprises toward net-zero emissions and promoting the sustainable development of production–delivery systems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109836"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Managing consumer deliberation with demand investment under platform retailing","authors":"Li Bie ,&nbsp;Song Huang ,&nbsp;Yiwen Bian","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109881","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109881","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies a manufacturer’s strategic incentives to manage consumer deliberation under platform retailing wherein either the manufacturer or the platform can engage in investment activities to enhance the market demand. Consumers, who are initially uncertain about the quality of the product on the platform, may incur deliberation costs to learn their true valuations. We establish a game-theoretic model to investigate the interplay between channel pricing and consumer deliberation with firm investments and its impact on channel equilibrium, and some nontrivial ramifications are derived. First, we find that consumers are less likely to engage in deliberation in the presence of investment, indicating the depression effect of demand-enhancing investment on consumers’ deliberation behaviors. Second, in the reselling format, the equilibrium channel strategy and the incentive provision for consumer deliberation depend primarily on the investment mode, investment efficiency, and deliberation cost. The manufacturer consistently provides an incentive to induce (inhibit) deliberation for a low (moderate) investment efficiency, independent of the deliberation cost. Third, firms have stronger incentives to induce deliberation by setting a higher price under manufacturer investment than under platform investment. And channel members’ investments do not necessarily benefit themselves, while the platform investment mode is always beneficial to consumer surplus. Finally, in the agency selling format, the highest thought-provoking price becomes suboptimal, and the platform benefits more from manufacturer investment than from platform investment when the commission rate is not excessively high. We further compare the two selling formats and find that the manufacturer prefers the reselling format if both the investment efficiency and the deliberation cost are high.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109881"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Optimizing vaccination facility locations and capacity for pandemic response: A case study of Mashhad, Iran","authors":"Siamak Kheybari ,&nbsp;Mohammad Reza Mehrpour ,&nbsp;Nima Moradi ,&nbsp;Maria Paola Scaparra","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109865","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109865","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Strategic and tactical issues must be considered when determining the location of facilities for service provision during healthcare crises. This paper introduces a systematic multi-step approach for selecting the location of immunization centers and warehouses for medical supplies during a pandemic. Initially, the relevant strategic criteria encompassing infrastructure, environmental, and socio-demographic dimensions are identified from the literature. Expert opinions are then solicited through the Best-Worst Method to assess the importance of each criterion. In the third step, a Geographic Information System is employed to identify potential locations and their strategic cost based on these criteria. Finally, a Two-Echelon Capacitated Location Allocation Problem (2E-CLAP), integrating fairness and capacity considerations, is formulated to select optimal sites based on strategic costs utilizing the principles of the classic p-center and set covering problems. The model is solved using an enhanced multi-objective Genetic Algorithm. The methodology is validated through a case study to identify the location of vaccination facilities in Mashhad, Iran. The findings underscore the capability of the proposed approach to alleviate patient congestion at vaccination centers while concurrently optimizing the strategic criteria and ensuring comprehensive coverage for all city residents.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109865"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Optimal hour-ahead commitment and storage decisions of wind power producers","authors":"Ece Cigdem Karakoyun ,&nbsp;Harun Avci ,&nbsp;Woonghee Tim Huh ,&nbsp;Ayse Selin Kocaman ,&nbsp;Emre Nadar","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109696","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109696","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Renewable energy generators often rely on their battery deployments to meet their commitments in electricity markets. We consider the joint energy commitment and storage problem for a wind farm paired with a battery. The power producer decides, in each hour of a finite planning horizon, how much energy to commit to dispatching or purchasing for the next hour, how much wind energy to generate, and how much energy to charge or discharge. The power producer pays a penalty cost if they do not fully meet their commitment. Using a Markov decision process model under uncertainties in electricity price (assumed to be positive) and wind speed, we first prove the optimality of a state-dependent threshold policy for the power producer’s problem. This policy partitions the state space into several disjoint domains, each associated with a different action type, making it optimal to bring storage and commitment levels to different threshold pairs in each domain. We then employ our structural results to develop a heuristic solution procedure in a more general setting where the electricity price can also be negative. Numerical results show the high efficiency and scalability of this procedure. It provides solutions with an average deviation of only 0.3% from optimality and achieves a speedup of two to three orders of magnitude compared to the standard dynamic programming algorithm, reducing computation times from several hours to just a few minutes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109696"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Used product resale through a manufacturer-operated customer-to-customer platform: Profitability and environmental impacts under third-party competition","authors":"Yu Xue ,&nbsp;Ozgun Caliskan Demirag","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109833","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109833","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The growing use of third-party customer-to-customer (C2C) platforms has transformed secondhand markets by enabling consumers to trade used goods with ease. Alongside these third-party platforms, some manufacturers have launched free, self-operated C2C platforms to facilitate the resale of their own used products and support sustainability goals. We examine the economic and environmental impacts of encouraging secondhand trade through such manufacturer-operated platforms in the presence of a third-party platform. Using a two-period product lifecycle embedded in an infinite-horizon framework, we analyze three scenarios: no C2C platform, a third-party C2C platform, and the coexistence of a third-party and a self-operated C2C platform. Our findings reveal that when a third-party platform exists, self-operated resale platforms enhance profitability for manufacturers with strong brand recognition, given viable resale activity. Strong brand recognition enables these firms to attract a sufficient volume of secondhand transactions to their own platform. In contrast, manufacturers with weaker brand visibility incur profitability losses from such initiatives. For low-durability products, self-operated platforms can simultaneously deliver higher profit and lower environmental impact, aligning financial and sustainability outcomes for firms with strong brand recognition. However, introducing a self-operated C2C platform alongside a third-party option is not always environmentally beneficial. For moderate-durability products, such platforms worsen environmental outcomes even though profitability may increase. From the consumer perspective, sellers benefit from higher resale prices, while buyers face increased costs for used goods when a self-operated C2C platform is introduced alongside a third-party option.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109833"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Applying sequential bifurcation and feed-forward simulation to reduce the prescriptive response time of a digital twin","authors":"Ryan B. Walton,&nbsp;Frank W. Ciarallo,&nbsp;Lance E. Champagne","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2026.109912","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2026.109912","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent advances in digital twin research have increasingly emphasized their role in real-time decision support for production and logistics systems, yet significant methodological gaps remain in enabling timely prescriptive analytics. This study addresses these gaps by proposing and evaluating an integrated approach that accelerates a digital twin’s ability to generate effective, computationally feasible decisions under dynamic operating conditions. This research envisions the digital twin as a decision support system capable of timely, relevant, and effective decision-making. To achieve this promise, the digital twin can describe its environment, predict future events, prescribe a course of action, and then actualize this course of action in the physical system. To ensure the decision is timely, relevant, and effective, the ability to quickly prescribe courses of action becomes paramount. This research addresses the fundamental trade-off between decision speed and depth of insight. Navigating this trade-off is facilitated by effective use of models to produce timely information, rapid identification of critical factors that drive decisions, and implementation of decisions when sufficient insight is available.</div><div>To address this need, the study integrates sequential bifurcation and feed-forward discrete event simulation to accelerate the digital twin’s ability to prescribe effective actions in real time. Sequential bifurcation efficiently narrows the decision space by identifying key input factors, while feed-forward simulation decomposes long simulations into shorter segments to enable earlier, partial decisions. Together, these methods significantly reduce prescriptive response time without compromising decision quality, supporting the digital twin’s role as a responsive decision support system. The paper also formalizes the trade-off between decision speed and depth of insight, offering a layered decision-making strategy to balance these competing demands. Experimental results demonstrate substantial improvements in decision timeliness and operational performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109912"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Integrated strategic sourcing of critical raw materials in an era of global disruptions","authors":"Tom Hunger ,&nbsp;Philipp Jens Erfurth ,&nbsp;Marlen Gabriele Arnold ,&nbsp;Matthias Gerhard Wichmann","doi":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109879","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109879","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Geopolitical tensions pose a threat to the supply of critical raw materials (CRMs), which are highly concentrated in a small number of mining and processing countries. CRM-intensive technologies are driving growing demand for these materials and intensifying global competition for secure and reliable access. Some supplying countries pursue geopolitical interests that can restrict CRM availability. The combination of concentrated supply, rising demand, and geopolitical tensions underscores the need for strategies that enhance supply resilience. This article integrates supplier criticality into strategic sourcing to promote a more resilient and economically viable CRM supply for enterprises. This integration is implemented through the Dual Sourcing Raw Materials Lot Sizing Problem, which analyzes five criticality scenarios with four different spot market procurement shares in a silicon case study. Criticality is measured using the World Governance Indicators. The empirical results reveal that increasing procurement through spot markets significantly reduces dependency on critical suppliers and the associated supply risks. A central result is that supply disruptions caused by critical high-volume suppliers can increase total costs by up to 23 %, while higher spot market shares reduce this effect to approximately 10 %. Therefore, sourcing CRMs from spot markets increases the robustness of an enterprise's supplier portfolio while simultaneously reducing its dependency on critical suppliers. This article introduces an approach that links criticality with strategic sourcing and demonstrates quantitatively that dependencies on CRMs can be mitigated through spot market sourcing. Managerial implications follow for CRM-intensive sectors, where explicit spot-share targets can complement long-term contracting under geopolitical risk.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":14287,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Production Economics","volume":"292 ","pages":"Article 109879"},"PeriodicalIF":10.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145963242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}