Information logistics towards logistical concepts for information production
Han Gerrits, M. Sijbrands · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 1992
Faster changing market demand pushed logistics to become an important aspect of business competition.Material producing companies (MCs) use logistics to improve their performance to comply with these changes in market demand.MCs are delivering their goods in shorter cycle times.Their fiexible production systems enable them to deliver custom made products.Information producing companies (ICs) such as banks and insurance companies, are facing the same changing market demand.ICs are, however, not able to cope with this.In contradiction to MCs, ICs are restricted in their product assortment because of not being able to produce custom made products and to shorten lead-time.MCs achieve performance improvements by using logistical concepts.In this article we suggest possible translations of these concepts into useable concepts for ICs to help them to improve their logistical performance.After an introduction on logistics, the second section discusses in detail problems ICs experience through changing market demand.Next, logistical concepts MCs use for solving these problems will be discussed in four areas: product design, product structure, production structure and organisation structure.In the last section we make a first translation of these concepts for ICs.