Postponement is a business strategy employed in manufacturing and supply chain management which maximizes possible benefit and minimizes risk by delaying further investment into a product or service until the last possible moment, or where a manufacturer produces a generic product, which can be modified at a later stage before the final distribution to the customer. An example of such a strategy is Dell Computers' build-to-order online store. One of the earliest references to the concept was in a paper by Walter Zinn and Donald J. Bowersox in the Journal of Business Logistics in 1988, which highlighted five types: labelling, packaging, assembly, manufacturing and time postponements.