Assessing product portfolios from a production logistics perspective

Abstract

The increasing individualization and the growing customer demand for product variety leads to a constant shortening of product life cycles and to the necessity of periodically rationalizing product portfolios. For this reason, approaches to product portfolio assessment offer methods that allow a financial or market-oriented valuation of existing products in portfolios. When assessing products in product portfolios, conventional approaches do not explicitly take the logistical impact of products on the logistics performance or costs of the production into account. The consequence of neglecting the logistical assessment dimension to product portfolios is that products, that have a negative impact on the logistics performance of a company, are not part of a critical examination. This paper therefore presents an approach that aims at developing a methodology to assess product portfolios both from a logistical as well as from financial or market-oriented perspectives. To this end, the approach initially works the influence of individual products and product characteristics on the logistics performance and logistics costs of production out. The consolidation of these findings with further evaluation variables then enables a product portfolio optimization with explicit consideration of a logistic assessment dimension.