Early-stage firms and delay-based inventory control using decision-making tableaux

Abstract

A resource constrained early-stage firm commercialising assembled products faces supply chain (SC) problems that could ultimately cause the company to fail. Delays, complexity, and associated cost overruns throughout the SC can quickly drain cash flow, putting a new firm in a disadvantaged position. This is exacerbated by the increased use of outsourced global suppliers, demands of resellers, and pressure for rapid growth. A decision-making tableau over a conceptual delay-based SC model is proposed, which identifies qualitative behaviour of inventories with respect to delays inherently present in the SC. The method can foster improved strategic decisions in new venture SC set-up and management that can reduce costly variations. A real-world case scenario is given illustrating a current state and substantially improved future state with the help of the proposed approach. The paper concludes with a discussion on the results, limitations, and direction of future research.

Keywords:

• supply chain
• delays
• entrepreneurship
• decision modelling
• start-ups

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Mr. Ismail Ilker Delice for producing Figure 12. Rifat Sipahi acknowledges his start-up funds available at Northeastern University.

Notes

Notes

1. An order time delay of two weeks was derived from in-person interviews with several consumer products-based early stage firms. Ethnographic interviews were conducted in 2007.

2. These delays were obtained from company principals during the ethnographic study period.