Supplier - Manufacturer Relationship Modeling through Satisficing Games

In this paper we propose a framework to analyze supplier - manufacturer relationship within a supply chain in two steps: the first step put the manufacturer in the position of a decision maker who want to select a short list of suppliers from a prospective and possibly huge list to respond to some of its primary objectives; in a second stage a negotiation process will be engaged between manufacturer and a selected supplier in order to establish the most mutual profitable contract. Bipolar analysis that is evaluating a possible alternative decision by assessing its degree of achieving pursued objectives and its degree of preventing that achievement or degree of resources consumption is highlighted as the main paradigm that guid decision process in the two steps. By so doing, satisficing games theory is used as the mathematical tool to modelize and analyze these decision making situations.