Channel Decision And Inventory Strategies In Customization A Case Study Of Chocolate

Demands of gift products become increasingly individual and diversify. Personalized needs of consumers are not satisfied with the taste and packaging, but the customized shape of the food. Traditional molding technology and the manual molding cannot achieve low cost, mass production and rapid customization, so the emergence of3D printing technology made it possible to mass customization. Due to shaping customization products do not have the characteristics of modular, so different from mass customization. Under manufacturer-dominate the shaping customization mode, manufacturers pay more attention to customize product channel decisions and customize multi-echelon inventory control of supply chain, through reasonable decision of the channels and the effective control of inventory make manufacturers to achieve the optimal profit.In this paper, we focus on two questions:First, the customization product channel decision. Custom shaping products require consumers to give the definition and specification of personalized products, then the manufacturers produced and distributed according to the custom demands. First of all, from the perspective of the consumer, some consumers like through the network channels to complete the customization, also some like across the traditional store give description of customization demand. Secondly, on the basis of analysis from the channel service, on the one hand, manufacturers would prefer to have direct contact with consumers in order to accurately obtain custom demand, ensure the quality of stable and accurate service. Traditional channel, on the other hand, by guiding the consumer customization make it easier for consumers to purchase and accept customized product. Therefore, how to make a decision according to the consumer channel preference and channel service cost is one of the key research issues in this paper.Second, multi-echelon inventory controls. After the introduction of shaping customized product, supply chain inventory control is more complicated:first of all, because the replacement between customized products and standard products, make the standard product demand change; With the change of product life cycle, product prices and consumer utility will change, these will affect the demand of the standard products and customized products, increase the complexity of inventory control. Secondly, the introduction of customized product, multi-echelon inventory model is contained semi-finished products inventory, manufacturers and retailers’ standard product inventory. Therefore, how to effectively control customization supply chain inventory is also this article purpose.In order to solve the above problems, this paper uses the consumer service preference theory; establish service competition model of a retailer single channel model, the manufacturer single channel and dual channel mode. Secondly, based on the consumer utility theory; establishes the multi-echelon inventory decision-making simulation model, for the enterprise to implement channel decisions and inventory control, provides the theoretical support, the conclusion has strong practical guiding significance.Through the above analysis and modeling process, this paper gets the following conclusion:(1) Manufacturer of shaping customized products makes channel decisions associated with the service cost of traditional channels. Only when the traditional retail channel service cost is high, manufacturers will create online channels. And when manufacture create online channel, manufacturers whether create double channel is based on the increase of cost and demand caused by service competition.(2) Produce a multi-echelon inventory control model by simulation software and build a retailer single channel model, the manufacturer single channel and dual channel inventory simulation model. Give full consideration of demand randomness, the shortage of products and the influence of order and delivery leader time on the inventory control, effectively control of the shaping customized supply chain inventory control.(3) The application of multi-stage inventory control simulation model. With chocolate industry as the background, analysis the effect of shaping customized product on traditional chocolate supply chain and provide the process of the application of the simulation model, to verify the validity and availability of EXTEND multi-echelon inventory decision model. Through the simulation example, the whole supply chain profit and manufacturer’s profits have improved, but the retailer profits will decreased, so there is a need to consider the cooperation strategy of manufacturers and retailers.