Quality control in food supply chain with dynamic quality characteristics

Abstract

Food adulteration in recent years has attracted wide media and public attention. Preventing and controlling risk factors that harm the quality and safety of the food supply chain and reducing the probability of food safety incidents have become important concerns for all main participant groups in the food supply chain. In this study, we use a differential game model to examine the strategic quality control behaviour of participants in a food supply chain comprising two food raw material suppliers and one food manufacturer. We study two cases, one of the centralised system and one of the decentralised system, and fully characterise the equilibrium quality control decisions of all participants in both cases. The findings show that under the centralised setting, the quality control of the raw material suppliers and the manufacturer reaches the optimal level. More importantly, the system can reach coordination through participants sharing their quality cost.

Keywords:

• Differential game
• food supply chain
• quality control
• food safety
• coordination mechanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [71501111].

Notes on contributors

Yan Ge

Yan Ge, Associate Professor, School of Management Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Finance and Economics. He received MBA in 2002 from Xi'an University of Technology. His major research interests are inE-commerce logistics and supply chain. He has published his research works in professional journals and books. E-mail: [email protected]. Telephone: [phone]. Affiliation: Shandong University of Finance and Economics, School of Management Science and Engineering, 250014, China.