Assessing the Effects of Assortment Complexity in Consumer Goods Supply Chains

摘要

Complexity management and management of assortment variety in particular is the subject matter of many strategic decisions in consumer goods industries. As the assortment of a company evolves continuously by introducing new or discontinuing existing products, the most important question is what effects on the configuration of the production and distribution network and related costs can be expected if the assortment is changed in a particular way?. This work presents the concept for a decision support system (DSS) that evaluates the most relevant assortment dependent cost positions for a production and distribution network, focusing on the areas of inventory management and production execution. An overview of the prototype DSS implementation Complana and its sample application to the cloths' supply chain of an international household product manufacturer is given.