Mass Customization Customer Order Decoupling Point Postponement Strategy Research

The Mass Customization is the result of development of science and technology and economy era. It is proposed in order to solve the contradictions in mass customization production scale with the customer demand. The postponement strategy is the specific implementation methods of the mass customization. It will delay the customers'special requirement as far as possible in order to economic mass production. Its biggest advantage is to reduce the risk of unmarketable products, satisfy customers'special requirement and help enterprises to reduce supply chain inventory. Therefore, postponement strategy is of vital importance.The customizing demand point is also named as Customer Order Decoupling Point(CODP). According to the production process, when CODP moves upstream, that can meet customizing demand and attract customers. When CODP moves downstream, that is advantageous to mass production and reducing the total cost. That is, CODP positioning is the result of the game between mass production and customizing demand.Firstly, study on the basic theory including the concepts, influence factors and modeling of postponement strategy and CODP; Secondly, from the perspective of supply chain, put forward two kinds of CODP positioning models. Chapter three focuses on the CODP decision-making model of queuing theory. CODP positioning is based on the proportion of Semi-finished products and finished products manufacturing time. By MATLAB, the model points out the CODP optimal point in the supply chain, which is not same when only considering costs of manufacturers or retailers. In order to improve the overall efficiency of the supply chain, we should consider the total costs. Chapter four improves the model of chapter three and demonstrate Vendor Management Inventory(VMI) can make the total cost become less by MATLAB, simultaneously, customization level and service level is improved which is significant indeed. Chapter five is about another CODP decision-making model, which is based on processes/Semi-finished inventory and genetic algorithm applied, points out the total cost and profits of supply chain need to be redistributed in order to achieve mass customization. Finally, the sixth chapter of this paper is summarized and points out the prospect of the future research work.