Supply Chain Design Paper - Essay Example

This can be seen as both advantageous and disadvantageous. Advantages of Riordan’s manufacturing strategy Increases quality There is one major advantage with regard to this manufacturing strategy is the ability to increase the precision of the manufacturing process. Highly customised goods processes make it easier to increase quality as the employees will master the functions and ensure they are able to produce perfect products. Meeting individual needs of individual customers Customisation means that each customer can get a product that directly and closely meets their needs (Fogliatto & Silveira, 2011).

However, firms involved in mass manufacturing find it harder to be able to customise their products to individual customer needs. However, with competition increasing and making it harder for firms to compete for the customers, it is necessary to increase the rates of satisfaction in customers. Mass customisation is an attempt to make mass production as customer customised as possible. It is looking at the needs of the customer as closely as possible and making sure that customers will get a product which is as close to their needs as possible.

Mass customisation therefore increases customer satisfaction and this makes the firm more competitive in the market. Disadvantages Increased costs Customisation makes it is easier to deliver to the customers products they want but at an increased cost. In manufacturing, the biggest issue is that defects costs the firm a lot. It is the dream of every manufacturer to reduce the defect rate to as low as it can be possible so as to help the firm will not have losses. Every defective product is a loss to the firm because defective products cannot be sold.

Mass customisation has the disadvantage of increasing the defect rates and therefore increasing the losses associated with the defects. Apart from increased defects rates making costs to go higher, mass customisation increases the cost of producing a single product (Chandra & Kamrani, 2011). In other words, even in the absence of the issue of defects rates, customized manufacturing is not as cost effective as the mass production. Increasing the costs will mean that the firm will have to increase the prices of the product, and this may deny the firm the competitive edge in the market.

Cannot be achieved wholly Mass customisation is usually a compromise that the firm has to make, and there is never a time where the firm will be able to fully customize the products. In regard to this, firm has to understand that not all products can be customised. In fact, as Blecke (2005) says, not all products need to be customized. Mass customisation only works where the product end customer is a mass buy. In cases where the end buyer is the individual, it becomes much harder to mass customize, and it becomes very impossible to meet the individual needs of millions of customers.

Mass customisation is therefore an idea that is simple in theory and difficult in practice. In this regard, it is important to be able to understand that mass customisation may only be a hype which needs to be looked at critically. Flowchart Metrics to evaluate performance Issue Concern Impact Meeting customer needs It meets the customer needs High Cost management The costs associated with is are not prohibitive High Applicability It is applicable High Relevance It is relevant for the product High Market outlook It improves the market outlook Medium In the above metric, the most important thing is to determine whether the costs incurred in