ABSTRACT Postponement strategies offer opportunities for firms to achieve effective supply chain management. Postponement strategies could be classified into manufacturing postponement which delays the product differentiation and logistics postponement which delays the distributing process to the confirmed customer orders. In practice, the way to implement manufacturing postponement is more complicated than logistics postponement¡¦s. By employing the logistics postponement strategy, all the firms have to consider is the distribution of finalized products from a centralized inventory to final retailers. Comparing with integrating all the manufacturing activities, logistics postponement strategy could be an effective one for firms to handle the demand uncertainty over the regional markets. By employing the logistics postponement strategy, firms could decrease the cost of inventory and backorder through delaying products distribution to the confirmed customer orders. The connection between real options and postponement is also showed on this point. By employing the real options, decisions could be made when the firms wait and get more information about the market. The value the firms wait to get is also the benefits that logistics postponement strategy could reach by logistics postponement. Thus, the flexibility to decrease the inventory and backorder cost is considered as the management flexibility that real options could evaluate. On the other way, it¡¦s not always free for firms to get such a flexible management ability. The capital that firms have to invest for any change of the supply chain becoming the flexible one could be equal to buying the exercise right in real options. We therefore could construct a model to evaluate the value of logistics postponement strategy via real options and help the firms to judge what would be the proper occasions for logistics postponement to be implemented.

本研究先將延遲策略在全球運籌管理上應用作一完整介紹，再對台灣的電子業進行實証研究，主要目的在探討：1.廠商所從事的延遲策略有那些態樣；2.產品特性對這些延遲策略態樣影嚮；3.消費者需求對這些延遲態樣影嚮；4.生產狀況對這些延遲策略態樣影嚮。 在對台灣電子廠商發放問卷後，從事統計分析，本研究先以因素分析探討目前台灣廠商所從事延遲策略的態樣，進而將這些態樣和公司基本資料、產品特性、消費者特性和生產狀況作相關分析，找出其中關係。而本研究之主要發現如下： 1.廠商從事延遲策略有以下幾種態樣：型態延遲（包裝、生產、標籤、組裝四種，其中包裝和組裝又分成二類），時間延遲，和行銷延遲。廠商亦從事功能性加速。 2.消費者重視時間因素和產品功能，高價值產品、高技術產品、合作產銷、產品有季節性需求和快速生產等因素會造成廠商從事不同的延遲策略。 因此依據研究結果，建議廠商可參考不同的延遲態樣，同時並思考自己的客戶需求、產品特性和生產等因素，在全球運籌管理架構下找出可能的延遲行為，將有助於成本減少和風險的降低。