In the paper we investigate what impact the deployment of wireless technologies can have on a supplier who manufactures a product and customizes it according to the individual wishes of his customers and how mobile solutions affect the supplier's inventory and transportation decisions. We derive several mathematical models for a special case when the supplier's representative visits each customer to approve his order and then sends all the adjustments of the order via his mobile device to the corporate back-end system. Only after modifications are saved the supplier can start the fulfillment of the customer's order while the agent can visit the next customer. The deployment of mobile solutions allows overlapping the process of visiting the customers and the production or transportation process what improves service quality and increases customer satisfaction.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIn Memoriam Lilian Barros - Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Logistics, ICIL 2005
EditorsPetri Helo, Hector Cancela, Gerardo Rubino, Maria E. Urquhart
PublisherInternational Centre for Innovation and Industrial Logistics
Pages245-254
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9974002745
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2005
Event7th International Conference on Industrial Logistics: In Memoriam Lilian Barros, ICIL 2005 - Montevideo, Uruguay
Duration: 14 Feb 200518 Feb 2005

Conference

Conference7th International Conference on Industrial Logistics: In Memoriam Lilian Barros, ICIL 2005
Country/TerritoryUruguay
CityMontevideo
Period14/02/0518/02/05

    Research areas

  • Inventory model, Mobile technology, Transportation model

    Scopus subject areas

  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

ID: 48975541