Agility and product supply chain design: The case of the Swatch

Abstract

When launching new products, innovative companies have to anticipate the organization of the supply chain, which will support the manufacture of the product, and thus redefine their role within it. Therefore, anticipating organizational, technological or strategic changes within the initial supply chain is a key to success as early as the fuzzy front ends of the design tasks. Thus the concept of agility is used to describe the evolution of the supply chain. The emblematic case of Swatch is then studied. Data is collected from the literature in order to be modeled so that the new supply chain can be compared to the initial supply chain. This article seeks to better understand the influence of decisions about product and production specifications, as well as strategy in the reconfiguration of a supply chain following the emergence of an innovation. Theoretical propositions are formulated to clarify the concepts of “agile supply chain” and “supply chain agility”. JEL Codes: O300, L100

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