Case Study on the Application of Postponement Strategy and Managerial Insights

Postponement is an organizational concept whereby some of the activities in the supply chain are not performed until customer order is received. Postponement is increasingly drawing the attention of company, which not only allows company to maintain cost effectiveness and economies of scale but also increases the flexibility of the operating system and the timeliness of delivery. In China, company is not very familiar with this concept, and the application of postponement is still on its initial step. We developed case studies in Wuhan district, which aimed to investigate the situation of the application of postponement in Chinese enterprise circumstance, to summarize the experiences of the application and make some contributions to the theory and application of postponement strategy. Based on the results collecting from some companies investigated, we achieved in-depth insights on the application of postponement in the companies and drew some conclusions on the following respects: drivers and inhibitors for the application, initially select appropriate postponement strategy, the framework for the application, main challenges for the successful application, other findings, and so on, which will benefit companies to reap more progresses in the application of postponement.