Research Article Assignment for Supply chain Essay

Research Article Assignment for Supply chain - Essay Example The first type of postponement approach is the product postponement. In this approach, a firm designs a product and uses standardized components to delay its customization (Brown, Lee and Petrakian 67). For companies like Xilinx, the final configuration of the product gets done when it is manufacturing or distributing its products. Implementation of the postponement approach was helpful to Xilinx because there was risk pooling. One of the benefits is that the risk pooling occurs particularly when aggregating the demand for the finished goods. In addition, the aggregate demand in the market becomes less uncertain which lead to Xilinx holding fewer inventories to offer similar level of services. Xilinx also benefits from having a reduced degree of customization which remains low through to the front-end stage (Brown, Lee and Petrakian 76). Firms prefer the traditional method of inventory management because it makes it easier for them to have virtual business models. For example, in the case of Xilinx, the business model allows it to operate at a high rate of flexibility and still maintains its processes at a low-cost. Xilinx also benefits from this model because it had new technical innovation and re-engineering ideas as a result of its improved manufacturing processes. The on-time delivery process of the products is also improved. One of the challenges is that redesigning a product to promote the process of postponement requires the manufacturer to wait for some time until the time when the customers change their designs (Brown, Lee and Petrakian 70). This happens in the new product generation releases. There is little that is done for a company that has implemented a postponement strategy and wants to create products without necessarily using the front-end stage strategy. Xilinx uses three processes to make their process postponement more effective. The first is the inventory modeling operation initiative and the second is the