Response from: Lorcan Sheehan    (12/05/08 2:19am)

Thanks for including our white paper in your blog – I work with ModusLink and am glad you found the contents interesting! Regarding your questions:

- Think of the manufacturing process as modular whether the product is fully modular or not

- For many products (esp in consumer electronics) the SKU variation may be as simple as packaging, accessories, firmware, external plastics. Even reducing this complexity can yield inventory, time and costs benefits

- The time and the cost based strategies are not mutually exclusive and a well planned supply chain can achieve both

- The priority that you place on time to market versus total cost will influence your ideal strategy

- The optimal optimization strategy may vary by product and will need to be periodically refreshed based on changes in fuel costs, product lifecycle and other inputs

- Need a good understanding of the tradeoffs between manufacturing, logistics, inventory costs by product

- Access to supply chain optimization tools will make this a more reliable and scalable exercise than the spreadsheet equivalent

- Advise from experience to put the effort up front into the supply chain design and keep the execution simple

- Also be careful about chasing very marginal benefits on individual SKUs. Your planning will be based on forecasts and expected input costs. We all know that these can change

To access the whitepaper click http://www.moduslink.com/whitepaper.


We also have some case studies on our site with details of optimized configuration strategies that worked.

Open to other questions or comments.