Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to develop a typology of co‐located supplier clusters, such as logistics centres or supplier parks, and second, to evaluate the theoretical perspectives at hand to investigate the co‐location phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach –...

Manufacturing systems in many industries face the challenge of manufacturing products that are assembled from multi-variant components. Demand for these component variants is correlated, and often subjected to an overall capacity constraint (e.g. fixed production volumes in the final assembly...

Purpose – While the concept of supply chain responsiveness (SCR) has received considerable attention in the operations management literature, mostly under the auspices of concepts such as build‐to‐order, mass customisation, lean and agility, so far there is a lack of comprehensive...

Lean production not only successfully challenged the accepted mass production practices in the automotive industry, significantly shifting the trade-off between productivity and quality, but it also led to a rethinking of a wide range of manufacturing and service operations beyond the...

This paper explores the relationship between lean principles and success in markets for premium products. Drawing on data from two sectors — automobiles and high-end audio equipment — the paper notes that the development of premium brand products is often driven by strong organizational...

Despite the fact that the benefits of lean production have been documented across many industry settings, firms find it difficult to extend lean principles downstream into their distribution systems. In this paper we review and synthesize previous contributions on lean principles towards...

This paper examines patterns and trends in motor vehicle safety recalls using a dataset based on 23.1 million vehicles registered in the UK between 1992 and 2002. A safety recall occurs when vehicle manufacturers call vehicles that have been sold and are in use back to their dealerships for...

Purpose – This paper examines the diversification of services and activities by freight forwarders in the UK. Following similar studies conducted in the USA, the paper analyses the trends towards service and revenue diversification that has been observed in this sector....

Vehicle supply has traditionally been based on forecast-driven production, and a large fraction of cars has been sold from stock—a practice which incurs considerable cost in terms of stock holding and sales incentives. Derived from successes in other industries, the benefits of responsive...

Purpose – The concept of responsiveness has been widely discussed, yet so far most of this discussion has remained qualitative in nature. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model identifying the key factors that determine the responsiveness of a supply chain system, which –...