ABSTRACT
The demassified, fragmented global market of multidimensional consumers poses a new challenge for manufacturers who think in terms of economies of scale production. During the 1990s companies began to incorporate small batch, flexible manufacturing techniques as they adopted just-in-time philosophies. In the mid-1990s the grocery and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries reorganized the supply chain. Suppliers wanted full access to information about targeted consumers so they could introduce products that competed on true market value and find effective methods for introducing new products.1 As a result, they developed processes and models that base manufacturing decisions on what consumers actually buy, thereby instituting a “pull” replenishment system based on consumption.
