If activities in the supply chain are postponed downstream in the process by shifting the customer order decoupling point upstream in the process, the order cycle time is affected. For example, if no additional resources are allocated to the postponed activities, the order cycle time and thus the delivery time for a customer will be increased. Therefore,
additional resources (labor and/or equipment) have to be taken into account for the evaluation of such process changes and the additional production costs have to be traded off with the reduction in inventory costs.