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Postponement is known as a way to reduce risk and inventories while still providing high product variety and acceptable response times. The paper is a case study that uses simulation for quantifying these benefits for a consumer electronics company.

Improvement potential is first evaluated qualitatively through interviews with dealers of the case company. Next, the benefit of postponement is evaluated quantitatively using discrete‐event simulation with data from operational ERP systems. The conclusions identify conditions under which postponement is beneficial in retail.

In the case company, shop inventory is necessary for high‐volume and low‐variety products. Postponing variety creation to shops has the potential to decrease inventories for these products by 40‐80 per cent. The benefits of postponement depend on delivery speed requirement, product value, product variety and shop size.

Many contributions on postponement have been conceptual. This study contains a quantitative test. The study considers both the spatial dimension (where) and the temporal dimension (when) of postponement.

The research was sufficiently successful that the company implemented the delivery concept arising from the results. Corresponding benefits seem possible for other manufacturers and retailers of consumer goods.

The contribution is real‐life quantitative evidence of how modular product architecture can be utilised to improve operational supply chain performance.

Logistics and supply chain management (SCM) are broad disciplines in which many different, cross‐functional tasks are investigated. In Scandinavia, research in logistics and SCM experienced a significant boom during the 1990s; the steadily increasing interest in participation in the annual NOFOMA Nordic Logistics Conference and the steadily growing number of PhD students enrolled in the Scandinavian research environments emphasizing the study of logistics and SCM bear witness to this intensification. In addition, a great number of doctoral dissertations in this field are completed in Scandinavia, adding greatly to the existent store of knowledge concerning a wide range of logistics and SCM phenomena. However, to date, precious little effort has been devoted to providing an overview of these dissertations. This paper is designed to fill that void. To that end, 75 doctoral dissertations published from 1990 to 2001 are identified. The framework classifies the dissertations into a series of main themes indicative of the state of Nordic research in logistics and SCM. Suggestions for future research based on this survey are likewise provided.