| dc.description.abstract | At the globalization of global market and under the rapid changes of supply chain at various industries, it is necessary for enterprise to enhance the competition capability by supplying products and services with responsiveness, low cost and excellent quality. Previously when enterprise faced the uncertainty of needs at market, the general approach to predict the future demand is applying historical sales data and related industrial trends & information. Further making use of “predictive manufacturing” to produce and distribute products, the enterprise can enjoy its economies of scale and reduce waiting time for customers by immediately supply upon receiving requests.
However for the time being, facing the leap of product species resulted from mass customization, the enterprise suffers from higher manufacturing cost due to increasing complexity and low efficiency at supply chain due to product multiplicity and management difficulty. It is also affected in two ways. Firstly the supply exceeds the demand that result in high amount of inventory, stocking cost, and even risk of phasing out. The other is the cost of product shortage due to undersupply and the inferior customer service due to the prolonged waiting time for the customers.
This study is therefore to solve the problems at crystal industry of high inventory level, low customer satisfaction, request prediction difficulty, and low efficiency at supply chain, etc. that due to product diversification of crystal components. The “Postponement Strategy” is applied, through planning redesign of product specifications and manufacturing process, to the delay of differences between products until the acknowledgement of customer orders, then completes the final differentiating operation. And the ultimate distribution process is fulfilled by centralized inventory control and request confirmation.
The improvement achievements to the research subject through the postponement strategy are:
Under the uncertainty of demand, the WIP is built up properly. It effectively solve the problem of demand prediction difficulty and enhance the flexibility of supply chain, cost effectiveness, and customer service satisfaction.
By product grouping and adequate inventory control, the lead time of product development can be shortened.
By product standardization and modulization, the inventory items can be reduced by 26% and volume by 28%. The inventory management and risk of obsolete and slow-moving inventories can be improved. | en_US |