Trade-offs
Bullwhip effect
Inventories are progressively larger moving
backward through the supply chain
Cross-docking
Goods arriving at a warehouse from a
supplier are unloaded from the supplier’s
truck and loaded onto outbound trucks
Avoids warehouse storage
Delayed differentiation
Production of standard components and
subassemblies, which are held until late in
the process to add differentiating features
Disintermediation
Reducing one or more steps in a supply
chain by cutting out one or more
intermediaries