Practical Research On Postponement Strategy For Mass Customization And Its Applications

With the intensification of the globalization and industrial competition, competition between companies has been changed to the competition based on the time and customers. Postponement, which attracts the interest of scholars and practitioners with its competitive edge, has been widely used and developed in some industries, such as the electronic industry and the automotive industry.The article sets the postponement as its research focus, puts forward the definition of the CODP, introduces the intrinsic features of the postponement, its background and applications, and analyzes the relationship between postponement and CODP. Chapter two of the article conducts a comprehensive comparison among MTS, MTO and postponement. Based on a comparison model, it demonstrates the effects of various factors on the cost and orders fulfillment time to the MTO and postponement, and puts forward how to find a optimized production mode. Further more, it establishes the CODP position model and brings forward the five steps method to locate the CODP.Chapter three focuses on the partial postponement. It studies how to make the best production decision by analyzing the main factors of partial postponement with two models concerning and disconcerning the customer waiting time. Based on these two models, it sets up another model to find out how to decide the postponed production ratio, which is the probability of the orders fulfilled by postponed production, in the partial postponement strategy.Chapter four firstly analyzes the figure of the unsucessful cases of the postponement, demonstrates the importance of the postponement risks to the performance of the whole manufacturing system and the supply chain, and then studies the postponement risk causes and classification. It discusses how to use the information to identity the supply chain risks, and how to evaluate the property of a specific risk, such as the probability and the lost of the risk. By using the failure tree structure, it studies the evaluation methods and steps in terms of postponement risk level. Based on the results of the risk identification and evaluation, it puts forward the risk control and risk avoidance measures, providing companies a useful method to avoid postponement risks in the supply chain based on customers advanced commitment. It also gives some advice on how to implement the postponement.Chapter five studies how to apply the postponement strategy to improve the company performance through the case study of an automotive seating manufacturer. It analyzes three kinds of demand deviation, which brings many problems to the production management of this company. Based on the thorough problem diagnosis, the author compares different solutions and puts forward the best solution, implementing the partial postponement to improve the productivity. The author optimizes the production mode by using the partial postponement model in Chapter three, and validates the best CODP location by applying the CODP position model in Chapter two. The postponement risks are identified and controlled by using the risk management measures in Chapter four. The demonstration anylsis in this article, very helpful in applying the postponement theory into proactice, provides feasible methods and remarkable experience for the Chinese automotive industry to implement postponement strategy.The main innovations are as follows:1) It sets up a MTO and postponement comparison model and a CODP position model, and brings forward the five steps methods to locate CODP.2) It uses queue theory to compare MTS, postponement and partial postponement by analyzing the inverntory cost, production cost and order fulfillment time of these three strategies.3) It establishes a partial postponement model, which considers the customer waiting time, to find out how to decide the postponed production ratio of a company.4) It applies the project risk management into the postponement risk management and puts forward the risk evaluation and risk control system for the implementation of the postponement.5) It applies the partial postponement model and CODP postion model into the production management in an automotive seating company, providing useful exploration on how to apply postponement theory into practice and on how to avoid postponement risks.