4.4d - Improving Flexibility Flashcards
How can flexibility be improved?
- Managing customer demand
- Managing business supply
What can a business do when demand is greater than supply?
- Increase supply
- Raise prices to reduce demand
What are the different ways for a business to manage supply?
- Produce to order
- Mass customisation
- Temporary and part-time employees
- Outsourcing
Core workers definition
Employees who are essential to the business
Peripheral workers definition
Employees who are not essential to a business
Produce to order definition
A manufacturing style in which a product is only manufactured once an order is received
Modular approach definition
When the basics of a product are fixed and some elements are allowed to be customised
Advantages of PTO:
- Customers get exactly what they want
- Less costs spent on buying materials that are never needed
- Can add value
- No time pressure like JIT
Disadvantages of PTO:
- No consistency of production
- Increased unit costs (no economies of scale)
- Need for increased flexibility from suppliers
Mass customisation definition
Making bespoke items for different customers but for a mass level
What are the four approaches to customisation?
- Transparent
- Collaborative
- Adaptive
- Cosmetic
What do adaptive customisers offer?
A standard, but customisable, product that is designed so that users can alter it themselves
What do cosmetic customisers do?
Present a standard product differently to different customisers (e.g. Lynx & Axe)
What do transparent customisers do?
Provide individual customisers with unique goods or services without letting them know explicitly that those products have been customised for them
What do collaborative customisers do?
Work with individual customers to help them state their precise needs to make customised products for them
