Its 3:15 pm and the final bell went loud, we abruptly stopped our work and started packing our school bags. And quickly we six of us were all set to leave for our mathematics tuition. By walk the tuition could be reached within 15 minutes yet we girls never went on time and if at all our tuition teacher asks why you girls were late we never delayed in giving a false blame to our school. But the one to be blamed was the Ice gola uncle who had been having his shop on the way to our tuition, yes at least once in a week we stop to pick our color golas from him. If it happens to be any one of our birthdays then it is definite stopping point. Green and yellow colored ones are my favorite likewise my friends had their own and the way we secured the 5 rupees for the Ice gola was also different, in my case I stopped returning the penny coins whenever my mom asks to buy something from kirana store; and later those pennies directly gets credited to the Ice gola account of mine.
Ice gola made our live colorful, yet today’s hero is not Ice gola but our Ice uncle. Ice uncle owned a 4 wheel cart on which he had white polystyrene (Thermocol) box filled with ice. Once the order is raised for a particular flavor, he will take some lavish amount of ice and put it in a spinning machine. And less than 2 minutes it gives a nice round shape for the gola by firmly setting the powdered ice together. Ice uncle does the next process of inserting the ice cream stick to help the people to hold the gola firmly. As a final step he just pours the colored sugary liquid over the entire gola. Viola! Within 3 minutes a customer preferred flavor Ice gola is made ready by him.
But why he had to practice these many rituals on the spot and why he hadn’t pre prepared it to save time, opens up the postpone inventory strategy of Ice uncle. In supply chain postpone is delaying a commitment as late as possible in order to prevent the mismatch between orders and inventory. In case of our ice uncle though he was sure about getting orders he wasn’t sure about the preferred flavors. Ice uncle serves 8 different flavors having ice as a common raw material, so he got the ice ready, machine ready and the 8 flavors ready all he has to do is wait for the customer preference. By this it is deliberate that he had followed an “Assemble to order” method to fulfill the order.
Certain benefits the Ice uncle enjoyed was
- More variety – Hence better customer satisfaction on purchasing the preferred flavor leading better customer base
- Inventory reduction – Ice uncle need to store the left over ice and flavor which is more convenient than storing the prepared and not sold ones
- Better forecast accuracy – By delaying the final customization until order is received Ice uncle could a better prediction on Ice gola demand
- Inventory cost- Since Ice uncle had only one four wheel cart which is already full by practicing postpone strategy he is relieved from the tension of buying extra boxes to store the prepared ones of 8 flavors
The disadvantage the Ice uncle faced was
Increased production time – During summers Ice uncle becomes more favorable to the locals, hence there will be a huge crowd waiting to order. Some might even get late and leave for their next job
Looking at the pros and cons definitely the operational postponement strategy of Ice Uncle helped him to meet up the customer demanded choice with a common setup. Today we can also observe certain types of postponement across various firms and their products for example: Dell assembly postponement of their laptops, Ibaco assembly postponement of their toppings and flavored ice creams. So folks could you think of any product or experience of a postponement strategy? #Happy_learning 10
Roobaswathiny (Amrita School of Business)
No comments:
Post a Comment