With time, products lose their attractiveness on the market, technology becomes outdated or customer demands are no longer met. To keep up success, companies need to replace old products. This means a huge amount of product changes for a manufacturer that differentiates through customer-focused product design and continuous product innovations. Ramp-up and phase-out-management are critical factors of success. As the product life cycles shorten due to the dynamism of the technology and markets, payback periods for the development costs reduce, too. In order to maintain profitability or to increase it, it is necessary to minimise the cost and time of product changes. This article shows how logistics contribute handling a lot of complex ramp-ups and phase-outs with optimal cost and in a short time.
