Research on the Influential Factors and the Performance of Manufacturing Postponement.

[[abstract]]Facing the era of customization, companies have to efficiently coordinate the functions of design?purchase?production, sales and logistics. Through postponing the timing of product completion enables company to minimize waste caused by demand uncertainty. Most domestic and overseas researches are based on models, few are supported by concrete example using customization to discuss the factors influencing the use of manufacturing postponement. Given that, this research is set out to determine the influential factors from four areas: uncertainty elements, customization, model design and supply chain, then analyze the effect of the influential factors on the performance of manufacturing postponement. This research used IT industry as its subject and aiming to achieve the followings objectives: 1. Discuss the distinctiveness of postponement, and categorize related papers/documents. 2. Discuss the effect of influential factors on manufacturing postponement. 3. Discuss the influence of manufacturing postponement on corporate performance. 4. Based on the result of actual example, offering guidance and direction to IT industry on the application of manufacturing postponement. By using factor analysis on the IT industry, we uncovered major influential factors in the four outlined areas before carrying out path analysis on each, we concluded that when the main product has a high deman/supply uncertainty, time based supply chain design and high demand for product customization, it will have greater influence on the execution of manufacturing postponement, result in positive outcome by effectively improve the corporate performance once the manufacturing postponement strategy is adopted