The impact of product life cycle on supply chain strategy

In order to compete in today's highly competitive marketplace supply chains must be engineered to match product characteristics and customer requirements. As products proceed through their life cycles these requirements dramatically change. Consequently supply chain strategies must be dynamically matched so as to maximise competitiveness. This paper demonstrates how an innovative UK lighting company re-engineered its supply chain to accommodate the impact of product life cycles. The key to their success is the ability to classify products and develop appropriate supply chain strategies. Careful matching of products to pipelines thereby enables maximisation of the appropriate order winner and market qualifier characteristics. The classification system used enables generic modelling of the methodology and hence potential for use in other market sectors. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.