WHAT IS THE RIGHT SUPPLY CHAIN FOR YOUR PRODUCT

Never has so much technology and brainpower been applied to improving supply chain performance. Point-of-sale scanners allow companies to ca pture the customer's voice. Electronic data interchange lets all stage s of the supply chain hear that voice and react to it by using flexibl e manufacturing, automated warehousing, and rapid logistics. And new c oncepts such as efficient consumer response, accurate response, mass c ustomization, and agile manufacturing offer models for applying the ne w technology. But the performance of many supply chains has never been worse. In some cases, costs have risen to new levels because of adver sarial relations between supply chain partners as well as dysfunctiona l industry practices such as an overreliance on price promotions. And supply chains in many industries suffer from an excess of some product s and a shortage of others because of an inability to predict demand. Why haven't the new ideas and technologies led to improved performance ? Because, Marshall Fisher says, companies lack a framework for decidi ng which ones are best for their particular situation. Fisher offers s uch a framework to help managers understand the nature of the demand f or their products and devise the supply chain that can best satisfy th at demand. Once products have been classified on the basis of their de mand patterns, they fall into one of two categories: they are either p rimarily functional or primarily innovative. And each type of product requires a distinctly different kind of supply chain. The root cause o f the problems plaguing many supply chains, the author contends, is a mismatch between the type of product and the type of supply chain.