Abstract
Recent years Taiwan’s electronic industry has been adopting the VMI (Vendor-Managed Inventory). Under the pressure of international competitors, Taiwan’s OEM/ODM plants that mainly rely on exportation have relocated production bases from Taiwan to China to cut down their production costs and it would prolong the lead-time of electronic components in consequence. Also to cope with mass customization by means of fast production and cut down costs of overall materials, the majority of OEM/ODM plants all expect electronic components suppliers to stock inventory in their warehouse for easy and quick access to it. Therefore most of electronic industry asks supplier as a vendor to adopt VMI for inventory management. This research focuses on one electronic components distributor as a case study to investigate the roles of electronic components distributors and their current operation and process in VMI mode and to analyze this case study’s problems and solutions of inventory management to current VMI mode in China’s bonded custom. Different from researches that emphasize how to develop VMI’s IT technology (EDI or XML information transfer) or that investigate how to control or manage inventory by complicated mathematic modes, this research suggests that benefits of VMI is based on trustworthiness between vendors and clients and correct and/or instant information that is the result of transparent, efficient and instant communication. Consequently the concept of Andon, which improves transparency of inventory information and allows each member of the network to make the most efficient and instant communication and decisions in hope that a high inventory problem as bullwhip effect caused by lack of correct information in current VMI mode will be solved, trust between vendors and clients will be enhanced and the quality of VMI service will be improved. In the meanwhile, this could be the industry’s future reference.