This [unedited] guest post is by a student in my EEP100 class (background post).
Please praise/critique/comment on its economic quality and importance to you.
Likuang Wong says:It is easy to notice that as you come close to the exit of IKEA, nearly all the furniture are designed to be flat packed in the self-serve warehouse. It is easy for customers to take their purchases home and assemble them by themselves.
The flat pack is more attractive because it economizes the shelf space in the warehouse. IKEA can put more items in the warehouse, but at the same time only few staffs needed to move and store flat packed furniture simply by operating forklift trucks. In addition, according to cost-benefit principle, cost of flat packing results enormous transport efficiency on a global scale. It means more loadings for every trip and less carbon emission due to delivery efficiency. For the customers, they could have affordable price benefiting from this cost efficient transportation.
IKEA and its customers both take action to bring the cost down: IKEA gets customers a good deal, and customers to take their purchased furniture home and assemble them by themselves. Of course, the price of time still costs customers something. Customers know which they can do efficiently for themselves. When you are about to assembly your furniture, it would guide you with simple and clear assembly instructions; then you only need some simple tools and follow the instructions. It might take you a while doing this, but the beautiful and durable furniture with an affordable price is really an incentive!
As this “do it yourself” idea is widely accepted, IKEA constantly works with manufacturers in a smart way to improve productivity and look for good suppliers with suitable raw materials to make cost of resource fall. Improved productivity and reduced resource cost would increase supply that can respond to huge quantity demanded by customers.
Bottom line: Flat-pack, a brilliant idea can benefit the company, customers and environment in many ways.
DZ note: An interesting (?) tell all by ex-IKEA executive
3 comments:
In addition to saving ikea on shipping and warehouse space, it makes it easier and cheaper for those customers who do not own pickup trucks to bring the furniture home.
It is also fun for the family and a good rationale for the man in the household to buy tools.
B and I had started thinking a few years ago that we needed to start spending a little more and buying "real" furniture, because we think we're adults now. But IKEA is cheap and has a huge selection of interchangeable items in predictable colors, all of which are nearly always in stock (in part thanks to the fact that they're not assembled). Hard to beat that.
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