Master’s Thesis in Logistics and Supply Chain Management _____________________________________________________ Title:                 Postponement in Retailing Industry- A case study of SIBA Authors:         Ahmed Kemal & Naqvi Syed Mohammad Tutor:               Helgi Valur Fredriksson, Dr. Date:               May, 2010 Key Words:   Speculation, Postponement, Customer Order Decoupling point, Retailing, Supply Chain Flexibility, Agility ______________________________________________________________ Abstract Problem: Today's business environment is characterized by changing customer demands, increasing cost pressures on retailers, shorter product life cycles and products becoming obsolete shortly after their introduction. The above factors make it difficult for electronics retailers to balance the costs of dealing with excessive inventory and not be out of stock. To be competitive, retailers should delay some of their activities until customer demand becomes visible. This brings us to the phenomenon of postponement. Electronics market in Sweden faces continuous growth, although at a declining rate. This is indicative of a saturation that this sector, as a whole, is approaching to. The above problems are due to the speculative approaches and standardized products policies that are in practice. Loss of sales and customers result from these practices. The current study analyses the importance of postponement strategy and the benefits it offers. This study also tries to explore the potential solutions for retailers that postponement may relate to.   Purpose: The scope of this study is to identify possible postponement strategies needed for SIBA. Method: A case study approach has been taken. The choice of the method is qualitative with an inductive approach. This involved personal communications during interviews with the managers of SIBA, using semi structured questions to collect data.   Results: The concepts of postponement, supply chain flexibility, agility and customer order decoupling points (CODP) are closely related to one another and it has been shown that as the depth of postponement increase from right to left in the CODP continuum, the CODP changes its position, moving along the CODP continuum from right to left and towards the upstream. With this movement, the flexibility and agility in the chain increases. Our finds suggest that postponement is rather underutilized and that wastes (by way of lost sales and customers, obsolete inventory costs and storage costs) in the retailing process occur due to speculative approaches in application at the retail level. We have suggested logistics postponement for two out of three product categories and enumerated the ensuing benefits that the retailer can derive by way of enhanced flexibility, agility and reductions in wastages and satisfied customers.

Customer Demand Uncertainty is a big obstacle for companies to sustain their competitiveness in the market that responding customer requirements becomes essential. Besides companies need to consider also their cost structures which should have in high consistency to survive as well. Lean and Agile terminologies have been investigated so far in cost and responsiveness to customer manner within internal system perspective i.e. product volume and variety. This thesis aims to link lean manufacturing steps with customer demand uncertainty condition following information systems, marketing issues and human factor for management level in framework that firm’s (manufacturer) current condition can be tested according to answers from questionnaires and implementation of assessment tables since it is used as guideline and provides on which level firms are in demand uncertainty, lean and agile manufacturing. This support enables to firms to create their own flexible leagile decoupling point according to their interior characteristics and capabilities in the market.

This paper focuses on four interrelated strategies: postponement, mass customization, modularization and customer order decoupling point. The goal of the postponement is to delay the customization as late as possible in the supply chain. It is also known as delayed differentiation. Mass customization is a relatively new term, which began to gain attention in the industry a decade ago. It was an obligatory invention as a response to the global market which becomes more turbulent day by day for the last two decades. Its goal is to produce customized products at low costs. Modularization is a common term that is used in many areas. In this study, we will focus on product architecture modularity and process modularity. Customer order decoupling point, which is also known as order penetration point, is used to distinguish the point in the supply chain where a particular product is associated to a specific order. Our target is building a model that explains how these four concepts are related. In order to achieve this, we will, first, research every concept individually; we will state the definitions, levels, benefits, enablers, success factors, drivers, etc. of the concepts. Then we will study the pair-wise relationships of these strategies. We will build our model according to the findings we have found in the literature. After building our model, we will explore it in Autoliv Electronics to see how it works in practice. Briefly, our model states the following: Modularization is an enabler of customization and it is necessary for the success of mass customization where set-up costs are critical. Product architecture modularity provides rapid assembly and cost efficiency that is required for postponement and mass customization. In addition, it is used to measure the mass customization degree according to some others. Postponement requires process modularity, and it moves the customer order decoupling point downstream in the value added material flow. It contributes the mass customization by increasing both the leanness and agility. Customer order decoupling point uses the customer requirements and existing capabilities of the mass customization for optimizing the flexibility-productivity balance.

The thesis study reveals that the position of bottleneck is a significant importance in supplychain process. The modern supply chain is characterized as having diverse products due tomass customization, dynamic production technology and ever changing customer demand.Usually customized supply chain process consists of an assemble to order (ATO) or make-to-order (MTO) type of operation. By controlling the supply constraints at upstream, a smoothmaterial flow achieved at downstream. Effective management on operational constraint willresults in speed up customer delivery. A throughout evaluation of demand constraints isnecessary to gain the competitive benefits over the entire market. The study is based on a conceptual model, comprises of engineer to order (ETO), MTO, ATOand make to stock (MTS) separated by decoupling point. All these represent the particularprocess in supply chain. The important perspective of this study is that the constraints areallocated in particular part of supply chain, which will become the supply chain moreversatile. This thesis study explains the use of detail capacity and material planningtechniques in upstream, midstream and downstream of the customer order decoupling supplychain. A shifting bottleneck concept has been studied in a better way, in order to keep relativestability and reduce the complexity in production management. This thesis study tries to findout some possible factors that reduce the bottleneck shifting in supply chain. This research provides the guideline about the implementation of lean, leagile and agility incustomized supply chain. Also key factors are discussed which are necessary to achieve theseparadigms. Basically leagile is the mixture of both lean & agile strategies. Leagile is inclinedtowards sustaining the flow for mixed-model production. Its intent is to achieve theefficiencies in mass production, while producing a medium variety of products. The focus inleagile strategy is to gain effective control at shop floor planning, including capacity andmaterial planning systems.Different relevant aspects of standardization and customization are considered through theproduction processes. In addition to this rate base, hybrid and time phase material planningtechniques are sorted in different supply chain parts through multiple level of bill of material.

Employer Branding är ett managementkoncept vars primära syfte är att attrahera och behålla personal. Nyinstitutionell teori redogör däremot för att organisationers motiv att översätta samt tillämpa ett managementrecept så som Employer Branding är att framstå som socialt legitima och bra arbetsplatser. Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur Employer Branding implementerats vid ett kontor inom Swedbank AB och vad det betyder i praktiken. Med nyinstitutionell teori som referensram kommer studien undersöka hur Swedbank AB har översatt, tillämpat och kommunicerat konceptet. För att besvara syftet har kvalitativ metod använts genom tre semi-strukturerade intervjuer utifrån ett selektivt urval. Information erhölls även från Swedbank AB:s hemsida. Analysen grundades utifrån etnografisk kvalitativ metod med deduktiv ansats där teoretiska begrepp har översatts till koder. Av resultatet framkom det att banken arbetar med en strategisk omdömeshantering via införandet av nya värdeord, ledarskapskriterier, en lokal prägel, samhällsengagemang, jämställdhetsarbete och ett relationellt förhållningssätt. Översättningen av receptet kan dock vara problematisk att implementera för Swedbank, då personalsatsningar tenderar att vara ekonomiskt konjunkturberoende. Banken hanterar detta genom en löskoppling mellan storytelling som förmedlar hur banken vill framstå och hur arbetet bedrivs i praktiken. Utifrån att betrakta medarbetarna som potentiella externa ambassadörer skulle banken med en mer inkluderande storytelling åstadkomma större förståelse och acceptans för sitt beslutsfattande. Organisationsrecept såsom Employer Branding verkar utifrån studiens samlade analys fungera bäst under goda ekonomiska förutsättningar. / Employer Branding is a management concept which primary purpose is to attract and keep employees. In contrast, neoinstitutional theory explains that organizations motives to translate and apply management recipes such as Employer Branding, is to appear as socially legitimate and good places to work. The study aims to examine how the management concept Employer Branding is implemented at an office of Swedbank AB and what it means in practice. With neoinstitutional theory as a framework, the study will examine how Swedbank AB has translated, implemented and communicated the concept. To answer the question, a qualitative method has been used by three semi-structured interviews based on a selective sample. Information was also provided by Swedbank AB's website. The analysis was based on an ethnographic qualitative deductive approach in which theoretical concepts have been translated into codes. The results show that the bank is working with strategic reputational management through the introduction of new core values, leadership criteria, a local character, corporate social responsibility, equality work and a relational approach. The translation of the concept can be problematic to implement within the bank, because staff actions appear to be economically dependent. The bank handles this by a decoupling between storytelling that conveys how the bank would like to appear and how the work is conducted in practice. Based on considering employees as external ambassadors, the bank could provide greater understanding and acceptance with a more inclusive storytelling concerning its decision-making. Organization recipes such as Employer Branding seems from the study's overall analysis, work best under good economic conditions.

As microprocessors move towards higher frequencies, lower operating voltages and higher power consumption, supplying noise-free power to the ICs becomes increasingly challenging. Decoupling capacitors with low inductance interconnections are critical to meet the power supply impedance targets. A variety of capacitors are used today to provide decoupling at different frequencies. Surface-mount multi-layer ceramic capacitors currently used at package level provide decoupling only till about 100 MHz because of the component and lead inductances. Embedding thin film capacitors into the package can expand the operating range of package level capacitors to low GHz frequencies. Thin films with capacitance of several microfarads and organic-compatible processes are required for embedding decoupling capacitors at package level. The organic-compatible high-permittivity materials available today do not provide adequate capacitance for the application on hand. While ferroelectric thin films can provide the required capacitance, processing temperatures over 300o C are required to achieve crystalline films with high permittivity. Hence, there is a need to develop novel materials and processes to integrate decoupling capacitors into currently prevalent organic packages. To this end, hydrothermal synthesis and sol-gel synthesis of BaTiO3 films were explored in this study. BaTiO3 films were synthesized by low temperature hydrothermal conversion of metallic titanium. Hydrothermal process parameters such as bath molarity and temperature were optimized to obtain thin films with grain sizes close to 100 nm, at temperatures less than 100o C. Novel post-hydrothermal treatments were developed to improve the dielectric properties of the films. Sol-gel process requires sintering at >700o C to obtain crystalline BaTiO3 films. However, the films can be synthesized on free-standing copper foils and subsequently integrated into organic packages using lamination. Prevention of foil oxidation during sintering is critical. Nickel and titanium barriers explored in this study were ineffective due to instabilities at the interfaces. Hence, films were synthesized on bare copper foils by controlling the oxygen partial pressure during sintering. Using these techniques BaTiO3 thin films with capacitances of 400 1000 nF/cm2 and breakdown voltages of 6 15 V were demonstrated. The films synthesized via either techniques exhibited stable dielectric properties up to 8 GHz owing to fine grain sizes.

The operation speed of power delivery system of packages has been upgraded to GHz. The instant current will pass to the power plane of the mother board by way of the IC pins and result in electromagnetic wave propagation between the power plane and the ground plane, then to produce the programs of electromagnetic interference. In this thesis, we will analyze the EMI of power delivery system of packages by finite-difference time-domain in two dimensions structure in three sections. In firist section, to computing EMI in finite-difference time-domain in two dimensions structure. In second section, to analyze more complicated power delivery plane, ex: EBG, in finite-difference time-domain in two dimensions structure. In three section, to add property of capacitors on power plane to reduce EMI in two dimensions structure. Above all, we hope to built a fast computing method to compute EMI to solve the time-consuming problems of full-wave simulated software. And to supply the engineer to deal with the similar problems in packages efficiently.

In recent high-speed digital circuits with pico-second rising/falling edges, it is reasonable to consider the power/ground planes as a dynamic electromagnetic system. The simultaneous switching noise (SSN) or ground bounce noise (GBN), resulting from the transient currents which flow between power/ground planes during the state transitions of the logic gates, has become a critical factor to degrade the signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) in PCB or package design. In order to accurately perform overall system-level power integrity simulation, extracting the SPICE-compatible models with the resonant effect being considered in the power/ground planes and incorporating the model into the conventional circuit simulator, such as SPICE, is essential. In this thesis, a two-dimensional transmission line (2D-TL) model is proposed for constructing the SPICE-compatible model of the power/ground planes. Based on this model, the ground bounce noise for the BGA package mounted on a PCB can be efficiently evaluated. It is found that the behavior of GBN between the only package and package mounted on a PCB (hybrid structure) is obvious different. Then, we combine the SPICE-compatible model of the power/ground planes with decoupling capacitors to fast evaluate the behavior of GBN. It also has a good agreement between our model and the measured result. Adding decoupling capacitors between the power and ground planes is a typical way to suppress the GBN. However, they are not effective at the frequency higher than GHz due to their inherent lead inductance. In recent, a new method for eliminating the GBN at higher frequency is proposed by electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure with high impedance surface (HIS). Finally, we utilize 2D-TL model to fast analyze the behavior of the EBG, and combine decoupling capacitors with EBG structure to research the suppression of the GBN.

The operation speed of modern computer system has been upgraded from several hundred MHz to GHz. The instant current will pass to the power plane of the mother board by way of the IC pins and result in electromagnetic wave propagation between the power and ground plane, so called ¡§Ground bounce.¡¨ To prevent the ground bounce from IC operation, decoupling capacitors are used. In this thesis, an efficient numerical approach which is based on the two-dimensional (2D) finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method and with a new recursive algorithm has been used for modeling the power/ground planes characteristics with SMT capacitors above them. By the way, we take several methods, such as Debye model, FDTD-SPICE, and telegrapher¡¦s equation, for modeling various mother board structures. Finally, we use the genetic algorithm for calculating the optimum capacitor placements to meet the expect ground bounce limitation.

<p>Customer Demand Uncertainty is a big obstacle for companies to sustain their competitiveness in the market that responding customer requirements becomes essential. Besides companies need to consider also their cost structures which should have in high consistency to survive as well. Lean and Agile terminologies have been investigated so far in cost and responsiveness to customer manner within internal system perspective i.e. product volume and variety. This thesis aims to link lean manufacturing steps with customer demand uncertainty condition following information systems, marketing issues and human factor for management level in framework that firm’s (manufacturer) current condition can be tested according to answers from questionnaires and implementation of assessment tables since it is used as guideline and provides on which level firms are in demand uncertainty, lean and agile manufacturing. This support enables to firms to create their own flexible leagile decoupling point according to their interior characteristics and capabilities in the market.</p>