Search results

Building to order enables manufacturing to better respond to market conditions. The time lost between changes in customer preferences and product mix disappears and customer demand can both be anticipated and shaped by the sales system. An automotive build to order supply chain must be able to meet seasonality within markets, and understand the detailed demand volatility for certain elements of the complex product mix, from which much of the profitability is derived. Market responsive manufacturing entails adaptive and flexible production and supply capability in conjunction with real‐time market interaction through revenue management. The combination of late capacity setting and revenue management can enable the whole extended enterprise to operate as a single entity. This article outlines the demand volatility examined for automotive products, integrated revenue and demand management as a solution, and the subsequent order system investment requirements.

Vehicle manufacturer “CarCo” has spent decades developing its supply strategy based on customer ordered production. Yet the combination of an over‐crowded European market and the need to grow sales poses a dilemma: what strategy does it adopt to manage its global operations? This research aims to examine the implementation of responsive operations and supply strategy to analyse how and why a firm's strategy changes over time.

Based on the observations from a two‐day workshop held for 50 managers at the firm's headquarters, the paper explores theoretical and practitioner implications for the continued development and implementation of build‐to‐order (BTO) as a cornerstone of supply strategy.

Despite considerable capability at functional and business level, CarCo must address corporate and industry factors in order to raise responsiveness. Managers understand the conflict between operational and supply strategies presented here, yet are limited in the extent they can act on this knowledge due to the multi‐level aspect of strategy and difficulties over control beyond the boundary of the firm.

Key performance indicators need to be modified to gauge individual sale profitability, alongside new incentives and measures to overcome demand distortion and supplier game‐playing. Further, the balance between flexibility investment and better customer fulfilment should be explored through cost analysis.

Presents a managerial perspective of supply chain strategy development, analysed through a structured academic lens. The paper illustrates the increasingly dynamic nature of supply chains and the importance of connections between retail distribution, manufacturing, and in‐bound supply as part of the global operation.

As supply chain management has become more strategic (rather than transactional) in nature the need for a more integrated perspective of how products, and processes should be aligned with strategic decisions to enhance competitive advantage has been amplified. The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of how this alignment should be done.

A conceptual framework was developed that emphasizes the need for alignment between the key aspects of a product and its supply chain processes and highlight, the links between supply chain processes and supply chain strategy.

Products can be produced with one of four distinct supply chain structures: make to stock, assemble to order, built to order and design to order. Each supply chain structure is appropriate for different products based on their demand characteristics. Each supply chain structure orients its production and logistics processes differently based on its strategic priorities.

High volume, low demand uncertainty products should be matched with lean supply chains enabled by efficient processes, whereas low volume, high uncertainty products should be matched with agile supply chains enabled by flexible processes. Medium volume and medium demand uncertainty products should use leagile supply chains that use a combination of efficient and flexible processes.

After thoroughly reviewing and synthesizing important findings from existing literature, an integrated framework is derived that highlights how products should be best matched with their production and logistics processes. Also, the framework is compared with two well‐known, process‐oriented supply chain frameworks: the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) and the global supply chain forum (GSCF) models.

This research aims to analyze the potential of revenue management in the German car industry. The concept offers the chance for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to be more customer‐oriented to reduce costs and increase earnings. To implement revenue management, criteria are required to segment the customers. The car configuration changes and the delivery time look suitable in this context and this paper aims to analyze these.

Survey analysis was conducted with 2974 German buyers of new cars. The respondents recently bought a car or were in the planning process of doing so. A total of 803 data sets could be evaluated statistically using SPSS software. Descriptive statistics and mean test were utilized to test several hypotheses and find out distinctions between the respondents.

The results show that German car buyers could be segmented in to different groups according to the criteria: delivery time and configuration changes. This enables manufacturers to introduce revenue management and realize benefits in better customer orientation and improved supply chain planning.

This research shows that German OEMs, especially the premium OEMs overestimate the value of change flexibility and short delivery times for their customers. The implementation of revenue management could help to reduce complexity and offer each customer the appropriate degree of change flexibility and the optimal delivery time combined with a process‐ and effort‐adequate pricing.

Leyland trucks is the largest British‐owned commercial vehicle manufacturer producing rigid and tractor vehicles over 6 tonnes GVW. Describes the flexibility required in supplier delivery, assembly capacity and labour utilization in a build‐to‐order environment while ensuring the quality of the product.

It is now becoming apparent that the prevalent “stock‐push” approach in the automotive industry of building vehicles against a long‐term forecast and fulfilling the large majority of orders from existing stock is no longer a viable proposition. Pressure from rising stock levels in the market and the discounts needed to sell these vehicles is forcing the vehicle manufacturers to rethink their sourcing strategy in favour of “build‐to‐order” systems. More responsive order fulfilment at vehicle manufacturer level however will have wide implications on the component supply and logistics subsystems. Based on findings of the 3DayCar research programme, this paper aims at assessing whether current logistics systems are capable of supporting such a “build‐to‐order” approach. Based on empirical evidence of benchmarks covering three million annual vehicle movements in the UK vehicle distribution system, key constraints in current vehicle distribution logistics will be established, and the cost and environmental impact of more responsive logistics will be assessed.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a newly developed integrated multi‐criteria decision method (MCDM) with two‐sided preferences or selection scenario in build‐to‐order supply chains so as to explore the future applications like supplier parks.

The current state of the consolidation scenario of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers is presented and build‐to‐order imperativeness in the case of a supplier park is highlighted. These motivations guided the need for development of a new technique in two‐sided selection scenario. The MCDM technique, like analytical network process (ANP), is integrated with a mutual compatibility index. A hypothetical example is presented to demonstrate the proposed methodology.

The newly developed integrated methodology helps the decision maker to incorporate both sided preferences in the final supplier‐manufacturer selection.

This paper allows the reader to understand the build‐to‐order supply chain and supplier park situation. The emerging trends in the automobile sector in India are also highlighted. This new integrated technique certainly adds value to the decision maker in today's competitive world.

Given volatile markets, the ability to quickly act is fundamental for companies – in regard to the internal production and to external supply flows in the value network. Related flexibility and adaptability concepts are vague and contradictory. Managerial methods either imply a generic application level or a narrow focus. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop a three-step approach to facilitate a well-directed flexibility and adaptability design within a build-to-order context: context-specific operationalization, thorough segmentation using advanced logistic criteria and purposeful deduction of improvement means.

Based on a thorough literature review, a procedural approach is developed and applied within two rigorously conducted company-cases. A triangulation setting is used within the empirical analysis.

A company's capability to act appropriately, quickly and economically in the face of volatility can be remarkably advanced through context-specific analysis and well-reasoned segmentation. A respective approach to enhance flexibility and adaptability has to regard rational, emotional and cultural aspects.

The literature review is selective, not exhaustive. Two case studies cannot cover all thinkable aspects.

The findings illustrate how flexibility and adaptability measures can be designed purposefully within a company-specific approach. Two potential directions of impact – uncertainty reduction and flexibility/adaptability improvement – are consolidated into significant criteria and applied to thoroughly classified areas in a feasible way.

Current approaches do not apply a company-specific operationalization approach and are not based on segmentation or are using limited criteria. Besides, most approaches are neither designed for quick operationalization nor continuous application.

This paper aims to investigate the factors enabling or hindering the simultaneous pursuit of volume flexibility and mix flexibility within a supply chain through the lens of a manufacturing plant seeking to implement a build‐to‐order (BTO) strategy.

To accomplish this empirical investigation, an in‐depth case study involving a manufacturing plant and its supply chain was designed. Prior to primary and secondary data collection, this research setting had already decided to implement a BTO strategy and had, moreover, carefully assessed several practices for BTO strategy implementation, as well as their interactions.

The studied case suggests that a number of approaches typically used to increase volume flexibility, actually negatively affect mix flexibility and vice versa. The existence of such trade‐offs may ultimately inhibit the implementation of a BTO strategy and this was the case in the studied company. Nevertheless, empirical evidence also suggests that, to some extent, volume flexibility and mix flexibility may be achieved synergistically, as initiatives such as component standardization or component‐process interface standardization would improve both volume flexibility and mix flexibility.

The pursuit of volume flexibility and mix flexibility in implementing a BTO strategy in a specific setting and from primarily an operations management perspective was investigated. As such, the findings can be complemented by viewing the case study results through the lens of other established general management theories or by replicating the study in different research settings.

While past research informs us about how manufacturing firms can successfully achieve mix flexibility or volume flexibility, there are few insights for understanding how volume flexibility and mix flexibility can both be simultaneously achieved within a manufacturing plant and its supply chain. This research fills this gap in the literature and contributes to the development of a theory of BTO strategy implementation, especially in terms of volume flexibility, mix flexibility and their interactions.