Reducing design elements to improve supply chain performance at Lego

Posted on December 23, 2011 by aviyer2010

An article in Bloombergbusinessweek (Dec 19,2011) describes Lego’s decision to outsource themeparks, sell the entertainment division and decrease the number of design elements available to designers from 12,900 to 7,000. The company describes each new element as creating both mold costs and global supply chain costs, with designers now required to be more creative using fewer elements. How does product variety add to global supply chain complexity ? Is there a point at which the variety level is too low to be competitive, thus decreasing revenues ? Since Lego is a toy brand, is this risk of decreasing variety higher than in other sectors ?

Unknown's avatar

About aviyer2010

Professor
This entry was posted in Global Contexts, Operations Management, Supply Chain Issues and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Reducing design elements to improve supply chain performance at Lego

  1. michael's avatar michael says:
    March 2, 2012 at 5:55 pm

    Hello Aviyer, I am very interested in the topic above however I´ve failed to find the article in Bloombergbusinessweek (Dec 19,2011) describing Lego’s decisions. I´ve read dozens of pages but the website´s terrible search does no help.

    Could you send me / post the link please.

    Many thanks and keep it up.

    michael

    Reply

Leave a reply to michael Cancel reply