In today’s sluggish economy your company cannot afford to have its cash tied up in slow-turn inventory. At the same time your customers have come to expect a broader product offering with predictable delivery. This interactive mini-workshop involves participants in a case study on postponement. Postponement means product manufacturing is not completed until you have the customer’s order. Postponement can be both single level and multilevel. Participants are shown how to stratify inventory; how to look for product groupings that can be postponed; how information flows through Sales, Engineering, Operations, and Finance; how to set component inventory levels, and what benefits to expect from postponement.
Reference Article
William T. Walker, “Multilevel Postponement in High Volume, High Mix Supply Chains”,
P&IM Journal, 2010 Volume 46 Number 2, pages 106-117.
Learning Objectives
Following this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify inventory imbalances resolvable through product postponement
- Restructure a product BOM for postponement
- Organize the information flow through Sales, Engineering, Operations and Finance to benefit from postponement
- Set component inventory levels
Estimate the cash in inventory saved through postponement
William T. Walker, CFPIM, CIRM, CSCP
William T. Walker, CFPIM, CIRM, CSCP is a 40 year practitioner at Hewlett-Packard, Agilent, Siemens and StarTrak Information Technologies. Bill is author of the book Supply Chain Architecture and an adjunct professor of supply chain at Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Bill holds CSCP Lifetime Certification; co-developed APICS Advanced Supply Chain Management courseware; and is a past APICS E&R Foundation President, a past APICS VP of Education-SIGs and 30 year APICS West Jersey Chapter member. He holds BSEE and MSIE degrees from Lehigh University.
Contact Information
William T. Walker, CFPIM, CIRM, CSCP
15 Russell Place
Summit, NJ 07901
wt_walker@verizon.net
(908) 721-2689
