Improving the flexibility of the desktop PC supply chain

Dell Inc. is a company headquartered in Round Rock, TX founded by entrepreneur Michael Dell in 1984. In its 20+ years of history, Dell has revolutionized the PC industry by deploying the "Dell Direct" model--eliminating the "middleman" retailers in the PC supply chain-and achieved the Number 1 market share in the PC market. In managing its supply chain, Dell also utilizes its direct model and owns strategic relationships with many of the contract manufacturers, most of which have factories in China. For desktop PCs, these contract manufacturers produce semi-completed products and ship these products to Dell's U.S. and Ireland factories, and then Dell factory workers complete the remainder of the desktop PC assembly process by installing the components that are customized by Dell's customers. In order for Dell to remain low-cost and readily respond to customer demand, Dell's suppliers maintain a minimum amount of semi-completed goods inventory in a hub near each of Dell's manufacturing facilities. Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.) was founded in 1974 by Taiwanese entrepreneur Tai-ming Terry Gou. Besides its home base in Taiwan, Foxconn has major manufacturing operations in mainland China, U.S., and Europe.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Johnson (Johnson Chun Hsien)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Simchi-Levi and Charles Fine.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Civil and Environmental Engineering.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37575

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37575