Over time, postponement applications have encompassed the whole supply chain from product design and development, to manufacturing and on to final distribution of products. For the purpose of this research, we review the postponement literature from a risk management perspective. Postponement was introduced as a marketing strategy to reduce risk and uncertainty costs relating to highly changeable demands by delaying the creation of time, place, form and possession utilities. One extreme example is that companies do not even finalise product design or start the full manufacturing cycle until after the necessary number of pre-orders from interested customers has been garnered (Ogawa and Piller 2006). Product designs may thus be altered not only to quickly respond to sudden changes in demand, but to address supply issues including unanticipated changes from suppliers early in the product cycle. That is, postponement may give the opportunity to change the configuration of one product at the last possible moment in case of disruptions in supply of a component. When a lightning bolt caused a fire at its
radio-frequency chip supplier’s factory, Nokia quickly redesigned the chips so that they could be sourced from other locations. With the design change, Nokia was able to meet its production target despite the fact that the fire disabled the original supplier’s factory for more than a month (Lee and Wolfe 2003).