Capacity investment decision in co-opetitive network by information sharing

The proposed research concerns the capacity investment decisions in a co-opetitive network. The proposed model takes into account a certain degree of information sharing: specifically, the standard real option methodology is combined with a fuzzy engine. The fuzzy engine collects the information of the network in order to support the capacity investment decision. In particular, the environment concerns the capacity expansion issue for independent plants operating in a co-opetitive network. The proposed approach is compared with a case characterized by no information sharing among the plants. An opportune simulation environment (based on the JAVA package) has been developed in order to test the proposed approach in several environmental conditions. The simulation results highlight the benefits of the proposed approach: the strong reduction of the capacity investment value and a more specific identification regarding the market conditions in which this goal is relevant. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.