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PurposePostponement (also known as delayed product differentiation) has been shown to be an effective supply chain strategy from an inventory‐reduction, service‐level improvement standpoint. However, there has been relatively little empirical research on identifying the drivers and/or obstacles to a successful implementation of a postponement strategy. This study aims to identify the importance of several managerial issues surrounding the implementation of such a strategy.Design/methodology/approachExploratory depth interviews with company managers were conducted to identify and examine issues that may affect a successful implementation. Borrowing from the concept of triangulation, the findings are integrated with results reported elsewhere in the literature to understand the interrelated aspects of postponement implementation issues. This approach provides insights that would not be had if the results of each study were viewed independently of one another.FindingsThe identification of managerial issues implies that there is more to implementing a partial postponement strategy than the repositioning of inventories prescribed by a mathematical inventory model. Several issues that may influence a postponement implementation are identified and discussed including product integrity, operations scheduling, and organizational readiness.Research limitations/implicationsThe depth interview process is an empirical methodology subject to the limitations of judgmental conclusions, interpreter bias and small sample size. The results of this exploratory study provide a more in‐depth understanding of drivers and obstacles to implementing this supply chain strategy. The findings suggest the need for further investigation of the issues surrounding the decision to adopt postponement.Practical implicationsThe findings have broad implications for manufacturing managers regarding the impact of adopting a postponement strategy on several aspects of the operations function.Originality/valueAlthough principally exploratory in nature, the investigation demonstrates the need for researchers to identify and better understand the managerial issues surrounding an attempt to implement a specific partial postponement strategy.

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Customer satisfaction can be achieved by providing rapid delivery of a wide variety of products. High levels of product variety require correspondingly high levels of inventory of each item to quickly respond to customer demand. Delayed product differentiation has been identified as a strategy to reduce final product inventories while providing the required customer service levels. However, it is done so at the cost of devoting large production capacities to the differentiation stage. We study the impact of this postponement capacity on the ability to achieve the benefits of delayed product differentiation. We examine a single‐period capacitated inventory model and consider a manufacturing system that produces a single item that is finished into multiple products. After assembly, some amount of the common generic item is completed as non‐postponed products, whereas some of the common item is kept as in‐process inventory, thereby postponing the commitment to a specific product. The non‐postponed finished‐goods inventory is used first to meet demand. Demand in excess of this inventory is met, if possible, through the completion of the common items. Our results indicate that a relatively small amount of postponement capacity is needed to achieve all of the benefits of completely delaying product differentiation for all customer demand. This important result will permit many firms to adopt this delaying strategy who previously thought it to be either technologically impossible or prohibitively expensive to do so.