Agile Manufacturing Strategy - Dell, Apple, SpaceX...

 

Agile and lean are two familiar systems of running the business, they are mostly adaptable for all types of business and all types of industries. Lean is described as… (Read more…)

The Agile concept is using market knowledge and a virtual corporation to exploit profitable opportunities in a volatile marketplace. Agility is defined as the ability of an organisation to respond rapidly to changes in demand, both in terms of volume and variety.

A company that uses the agile strategy to effectively run its business always relies on its IT team. Because that company will look past and future mostly, for that, they need an excellent tech knowledge with an analytics expert. Past here mentioning is the history of sale or packages delivered and future refer the future demand. So they surely need the demand planners and tech experts to assess and calculate the historical data of the company.

Another important thing we need to know here is the Decoupling point or the order penetration point and the Postponement. The Decoupling point or order penetration point is the point where the demand occurs in the supply chain. So the inventory carries the form of finished product and goes back to continue or finish the manufacturing of that product once the demand penetrates the supply chain. That holding technique of the unfinished product is called Postponement.

 For instance, the shirt manufacturer made the units of white shirts while the normal period of the business and hold some units of white shirts in the inventory. After that, they start dying and printing designs on the white shirts about what customisation does customer needs (the demand penetrates the business).

DELL

Here comes the greatest example of the agile strategy is, the famous and lovable Dell Inc.

Dell Inc. is a well-known company of computers and Laptop manufacturers and distributors. Dell provided the 3 ways of ordering their product directly to the end customer; toll-free numbers, internet sites, and face-to-face sales.

All three are really customer-friendly in means of variety. This means they gave customers full freedom to customise the entire computer or laptop from the RAMs to the colour of the product. This is a great example of this agile manufacturing, in this case, both customers and sellers are also happy. This means due to the direct buy from manufacturers and customised products the customer would be happy and Dell also cut down the inventory charges by making products only for customers, not to stock in inventory. 

Other Companies with agile strategy is Apple, SpaceX, Spotify, Barclays Bank, and so on.

Posted by 

Lokesh Venkatachalam