Simulation-Based Analysis of Postponement Strategy Effect under Various Supply Chain Configuration

초록

With the stream of time, business environment is growing complicated and consumers' wants diversified more and more landing corporations in a difficult situation to consider an assortment of various goods and a high level of service at the same time. But the production method with which supplies many types of products sustaining a high availability accompanies indispensable cost burden caused by inventory, and in case demand uncertainty is high, such cost increases more. So some corporations started to use "postponement" strategy which postpones the whole or a part of production process until the time when consumers' purchase are confirmed for a raise of service level and a cutdown of inventory costs, and various ways and views of studies on the postponement are under way centering around Europe & North America. But a recognition or systematic study on the postponement as a corporate strategy is unsatisfactory level yet, and it's also true to see any successful postponement case till now. Accordingly, this study aims to make up a framework which bolsters a decision making of postponement strategy enforcement on the basis of its previous quantitative study and in addition to it, to evaluate its effect in various market environments. And organizes a decision making model related to feasible or infeasible postponement making the total cost of a scale for evaluation of strategic validity, with a comparison of postponement effect under various alternatives using‘ARENA’, a simulation program relevant to production and physical distribution system.