Evaluation and Application of Thesis

MMS DBA Student-Walden University Introduction Christopher and Towill in the article, “Developing Market Specific Chain Strategies”, developed the thesis that there are three feasible pipeline designs for supply chain (Christopher & Towill, 2002). These designs resulted from the analysis of the relations between, demand, product, supply lead-times, as main factors in global supply chain, and, cost and agility, as results from the market requirements. Christopher and Towill adopted a notion of total cost that reflects more the unit cost than the traditional way of limiting cost to manufacturing cost (Christopher & Towill, 2002). Hewlett-Packard (HP) along with its early integrated process supply chain management has adopted that notion of total cost (Lee & Billington, 1995; Edmondson & Wheelwright, 1989). In fact total integrated inventories with retailers adopted by HP correspond to the quick response model developed by Christopher and Towill (Billington et al., 2004). The predictable demand model may fit the decentralized incorporated system adopted by HP (Edmondson & Wheelwright, 1989). Analysis and Findings Based on the assumptions that demand is either predictable or volatile, product is either standard or special, and supply lead-times are either long or short, and all are applicable in the global supply market, Christopher and Towill induced eight possibilities for the supply chain based on demand, product, and supply lead-times (Christopher & Towill, 2002). The findings of eight possibilities based on the characteristics of demand, product, and lead-times specified is coherent to the mathematical combination formulae associated, the number of possibilities to combine three sets of two elements each. The analysis of these eight possibilities, in respect with agility and cost effectiveness, led Christopher and Towill to conclude on the representativeness of the three pipelines, lean pipeline, agile pipeline, and quick response model, as supply

References: Billington, C., Callioni, G., Crane, B., Ruark, J. D., Rapp, J. U., White, T., & Willems, S. P. (2004, Jan/Feb) Lee, H. L., & Billington, C. (1995, Sep/Oct). The Evolution of Supply-Chain-Management Models and Practice at Hewlett-Packard Martin Christopher, & Denis R Towill. (2002). Developing market specific supply chain strategies ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 196608131). Mentzer, J