To view postponement from a complexity perspective, the starting premise of this section is that companies pursuing postponement can often be viewed as complex organisational systems. For example, their production and delivery systems are generally characterised by a very high proliferation of individual items, either in input components and subassemblies or finished goods. The complexity induced by the increasing product proliferation has been considered a primary driver for adopting a postponement strategy. Product proliferation increases the level of complexity present in a production system, such as forecasting, product purchasing and production scheduling (e.g., Kotteaku et al. 1995, Fisher 1997). Part of the postponement principle is to seek an undifferentiated status by delaying volume, weight, value adding operations or final customisation. In addition to the reduced inventory costs and lower logistics costs, postponement involves a decreasing complexity at the end product level as final products are not manufactured and held until a customer order arrives. More importantly, postponement suggests that the stage at which a product variation occurs should be delayed towards the end of process thus minimising the level of the variety-induced complexity. If a product variation occurs closer to the end of the production process, it will significantly reduce upstream complexity involved with sourcing, manufacturing and transport such as reducing the number of parts and suppliers to manage. By contrast, if the variation is introduced in the early phase of production, it may require performing a greater number of subsequent operations, increasing the complexity of downstream processes (Prasad 1998).