Practical Research On Postponement Strategy For Mass Customization And Its Applications

Today's market is characterized by the fact that customer's needs are more and more uncertain, product life cycle is becoming shorter, and customer's needs for service level of delivery and product's lead time are much improved. It is becoming a trend for modern enterprises pursuing new competence advantages to provide with customized product, satisfy the customer in all aspects. The essential concept of mass customization(MC)is to pursue cost effectiveness and quick response to customer's needs.Postponement Strategies, as effective and practical strategic technologies for the companies to improve their flexibility and agility, are the important means that help the companies efficiently implement MC at low costs.Based on the relevant theoretical research, this thesis firstly accomplishes product postponement with standardization,commonality and modular division. The thesis puts forward the concept of"postponement module"as the principle of modular division. Then through analyzing the connection between product components and its attributes, obtains the higher degree product modulation with the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Secondly, the thesis optimizes the process by standardizing,delaying and reengineering to make it more adapted to MC. More importantly, the real option approach was firstly adopted to establish a positioning model of CODP in the produce processes for MC in this thesis. The option value was considered in the optimal decision making. By solving the Partial Differential Equation, the optimal CODP was got. The effects of volatilities, risky prices and correlative variable on the optimal switching were analyzed via a numerical example. It shows that CODP should be earlier with the increase of correlative variable and risky price of the total value; CODP should be later with the increase of volatilities and risky price of the total cost.Finally, on the view of enterprise applications, the thesis makes a survey in the domestic enterprises, measures the major factors that impact the application of Postponement Strategies with the statistical methods. The results from data analysis indicate that the relationships among the variables (postponement, managerial practices, uncertainty and company performance) were significant and positive. Moreover, the respondents expect postponement to be more used in three years.