← Back to Network View

Card image cap
From Push-to-pull 19#

This pattern describes the strategy of a company to decentralize and thus add flexibility to the company's processes in order to be more customer focused. To quickly and flexibly respond to new customer needs, any part of the value chain including production or even research and development can be affected.


Apply this pattern to your own business and create your next innovative business model!

Start the ideation

Examples: Iconic Cases

How they do it: The Toyota Production System set off demand-driven production, replenishing the inventory on demand so that internal inventories were reduced to a minimum. The introduction of the Toyota Production System obliged the company to reorganise its entire value chain in such a way as to reduce waste and costs, and at the same time maintain a clear customer focus.
Learn more about Toyota →

How they do it: Zara employs hundreds of designers and fashion observers world-wide to ensure early recognition of fashion trends and developments. New designs resulting from these scouts may be produced by Zara’s integrated value chain in a mere few weeks.
Learn more about Zara →

How they do it: In offering its personalized computers through their direct selling channels, Dell applied a push-to-pull strategy. Concretely, Dell predefines which part of the computer can be configurated individually and then ”pushes” predetermined options/configurations of their product to the customer. The customer then ”pulls” by choosing one of those options and the customized order is then ”pulled” through the supply chain.
Learn more about Dell →