ADAPTING POSTPONEMENT STRATEGIES WITH RESPECT TO THE PROFILES OF ENVIRONMENT

In the short life cycle era, many companies struggle to survive by increasing their product spectrum to gain more market share. For the pressure of such competitive environment coupled with the difficulty of forecast, the design of products tends to employ the concept of modularity and postponement strategy in supply chain management. In this study, a novel mathematical model with considerations of the environmental uncertainty profiles is developed to analyze postponement, speculation and hybrid strategies with diverse system properties to compare the cost effect incurred. Accordingly, the decision maker can utilize this model to determine which postponement strategy should be adopted to reach better performance.