Aligning the supply chain with business strategy

Supply-chain alignment begins with the customer's actual choice: speed, specification flexibility or cost, alongside the quality needed merely to qualify. Choose the forecast-to-order boundary against feasible lead time and inventory exposure, then test process and layout against volume and variety. Faster delivery cannot be achieved by moving defects to a supplier or relying on nominal capacity. In make-or-buy, compare avoidable cost, qualification, drawing rights and bottleneck opportunity cost: making for 90,000 versus first-year buying for 94,800 differs from the 12,500-unit steady-state break-even.

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