The Implications of Product Variety for Supply Network Design

This chapter demonstrates how collaboration in supply chains combined with appropriate strategic and operational considerations can support the management of requisite variety and product customization. The chapter introduces a resilient multiplant network (REMPLANET) integrated framework based on customization and variety types, which addresses strategic, operational and supply network issues associated with each customization/variety type. The framework focuses on a set of network types and provides, for each of these network types, strategic concepts, operational concepts, essential and useful collaborative initiatives, and relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring network performance.