Hemlata Sunhare

Apratul Chandra Shukla

Tarangini

Abstract

In today's highly competitive environment, companies have to achieve agility in order to respond effectively to the rapidly changing customer-driven markets. Effective Supply chain management is the key for betterment of companies. Postponement is an organizational concept; it means delaying differentiating activities in the supply chain until customer orders are received. The postponement strategy in supply chain management can enhance a company's flexibility to effectively meet the requirements of the growing varieties of product and quick deliveries. In this paper, an attempt is made to find out the factors that will improve supply chain performance using postponement strategy. Possible difficulties and increased resource consumption in initiating postponement at retailer's level are also included in the study to capture realistic scenario. The objective is to study the postponement concept in paint industries and find out its benefits and limitations. A survey based approach to get responses from retailers of selected paint manufacturing organization is used to collect primary data which is analyzed using statistical tools. It is established that postponement has resulted in better customer satisfaction through higher flexibility, improved service level, improved convenience and reduced inventory management costs.

Keywords- Supply Chain Management, Postponement, Performance Improvement, Inventory Management, Paint Industry