The problems involved in assembly of packaged ready‐to‐assemble (RTA) products such as bicycles, furniture, etc., are well known. Some of the factors that contribute to the difficulty in assembly are unclear assembly instructions and poor grouping of parts in packages. Typically, RTA...

Ready‐to‐assemble products such as exercise bicycles and furniture have successfully been marketed to customers as a low‐cost alternative to fully assembled ones. Due to the difficulty of assembling the newer and complex products that are currently in demand, recent surveys suggest that a...

In the last decade, we have witnessed companies investing in financially and laboriously expensive enterprise information technologies (EITs) that unify the internal and external supply chains for the purpose of gaining strategic advantages. As performance metrics data resulting from such...