Theoretically, the product life cycle should begin with the introductory stage, then growth, maturity and finally the decline stage. Indeed, some products have very atypical life cycles, whose curves are very different from the classical one. There is no set schedule for the stages of a product life cycle. Differences will occur depending on the type of product, how well it is received by the market, the promotional mix of the company, and the aggressiveness of the competition.
Published in Chapter:
A Stochastic Approach to Product-Driven Supply Chain Design
Khaoula Besbes (Université Lillle Nord de France, France & Université de Sfax, Tunisia), Hamid Allaoui (Université Lillle Nord de France, France), Gilles Goncalves (Université Lillle Nord de France, France), and Taicir Loukil (Université de Sfax, Tunisia)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 40
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7258-1.ch003
Abstract
Supply chain is an alliance of independent business processes, such as supplier, manufacturing, and distribution processes that perform the critical functions in the order fulfillment process. However, the discussions in marketing and logistic literature universally conclude that it would be desirable to determine the life cycle of products in the firm, as they have a great impact on appropriate supply chain design. Designing a supply chain effectively is a complex and challenging task, due to the increasing outsourcing, globalization of businesses, continuous advances in information technology, and product life cycle uncertainty. Indeed, uncertainty is one of the characteristics of the product life cycle. In particular, the strategic design of the supply chain has to take uncertain information into account. This chapter presents a two-phase mathematical programming approach for effective supply chain design with product life cycle uncertainty considerations.