Fulfillment of Heterogeneous Customer Delivery Times through Decoupling the Production and Accelerating Production Orders

Manufacturing companies are facing increasing customer requirements regarding delivery times and delivery reliability. In this context, customers have different desired delivery times. The fulfillment of heterogeneous customer delivery times represents a major challenge in the competition for customers. If companies succeed in reliably meeting their customers' desired delivery times, this results in an enormous competitive advantage. Instruments for achieving specific delivery times include especially the use of fast-track orders and shifting the customer order decoupling point. When these instruments are used, numerous interdependencies must be considered. Shifting the customer order decoupling point downstream toward a Make-to-Stock production results in higher stock levels. The use of fast-track orders induces longer throughput times for other orders and higher control effort. In this paper, taking these trade-offs into account, an approach is developed that allows delivery time requirements to be met through a systematic determination of the customer order decoupling point and a share of fast-track orders. For this purpose, interdependencies between both instruments and logistic objectives are identified and investigated using logistical models to meet the delivery time requirements at lower logistical costs.