Postponement Strategy Choice for your Supply Chain

Lately there are a lot of discussions going on among supply chain professionals about the adequacy and effectiveness of postponement strategies. They generally aim at delaying certain tasks of the supply chain in order to gain flexibility in reacting to demand uncertainty. A very typical example is form postponement, whereby certain production, assembly or packaging activities are delayed until a customer order is received. This is also associated with make-to-order, assemble-to-order, package-to-order etc. The aim is to gain more flexibility in responding to specific customer needs, while keeping inventories low, due to the fact that only the base products/inputs need to be stocked instead of all differentiated finished products. Especially in the present economic situation, postponement strategies seem to gain major attention, due to the importance of any capital that is not tight up in inventory.

There are many different kinds of postponement strategies that can be implemented at various locations of the supply chain. These are, among others, price postponement, logistics postponement, form postponement, purchasing postponement and product development postponement. The question remains, which postponement strategy is most appropriate for my company? And of course, why? Research suggests that there is a link between the level of demand uncertainty and a certain postponement strategy. This seems quite intuitive, because the goal of postponement is to become more flexible in reacting to demand uncertainty. But can the source of demand uncertainty determine or indicate the adequacy of a certain postponement strategy?

This is exactly what I am currently researching for my Master Thesis. My aim is to establish relationships between different sources of demand uncertainty, for example the bullwhip effect, and different kinds of postponement strategies. For this purpose, I am conducting an online survey among supply chain professionals. I hope that I could awaken your interest for this topic and thereby motivate you to support my research by filling out a short online questionnaire. I would highly appreciate your participation, as it will be extremely valuable for the success of my research!

Please follow this LINK to start the questionnaire. 

In case you have any questions or comments, please contact me via email: m.bartels@student.maastrichtuniversity.nl