This 2008 book will show how to: Build any product, standard or mass-customized, on-demand without forecasts or inventory. Simplify supply chains to resupply spontaneously, rather than trying to manage complex supply chains that order and wait for parts. Achieve substantial cost advantages from eliminating inventory and many overhead costs. Revolutionize company business models with evolutionary self-supporting steps for dramatic growth of revenue and profits. 
 This book will be extremely valuable for manufacturers that have any of these challenges: 
  Customization.  Craft customizing is slow, expensive, and hard to maintain quality. Customizing by mass production is inefficient and compromises the other production. 
  Product Variety.  Build-to-forecast producers sell products from inventory. As variety increases, it gets harder to keep enough of every variation in stock to satisfy demand. 
  Unreliable Forecasts.  Forecast accuracy decreases dramatically as variety and market volatility increase, which are both rising. 
  Inventory Problems.  Selling products from inventory creates many problems: out-of-stocks, obsolescence, write-offs, inventory carrying costs, and discounting unsold inventory. 
  Response time.  Manufacturers of products or industrial parts may try to build products to-order but will not be able to deliver them quickly if they have to wait for parts, setup changes, and equipment availability.