122 Principles of Supply Chain Management
delivery processes are effective at dealing with situations where the variety of items is high,
the volume of individual units is low, the length of product or service life is short, and new
product development time is short. Rigid delivery processes are effective where produc-
tion volumes are high and the product life cycles are long. Flexible processes are designed
to provide the capability to produce high volumes of a variety of products. Designing pro-
cesses to match the product characteristics can increase supply chain effectiveness.
There are four major SCM processes: (1) make to stock (MTS), (2) assemble to order
(ATO), (3) make to order (MTO), and (4) engineer to order (ETO). We describe them ...