The Principle of Postponement, early presented by Alderson (1950), proposes that the time of shipment and the location of product final configuration in the distribution of a product be delayed until a customer order is received. Although many authors have studied when form postponement is justified and the benefits of products and processes differentiation, few substantial efforts have been made to operationalize the theory of postponement in a specific supply chain in order to describe the benefits identified by the executive managers. The literature review has covered over 50 years of postponement research what resulted in a proposed integrative framework. Focus is placed on the upstream part of the supply chain, i.e. between factories - far from the consumer. The objective of this study was to investigate the Principle of Postponement in the press ink supply chain, through three dimensions: The conditions when postponement is justified; the place in the supply chain where final configuration should occur and the benefits of form postponement identified by the managers. To attend this objective, the research was classified as exploratory and confirmatory since seven case studies were developed. Six of them were packaging manufacturers and one was in a press ink manufacturer. Interviews were made with executive managers involved with decisions about ink configuration. The analysis identified patterns in the case studies. The results enabled evaluation of existing propositions in the literature, allowing the confirmation of some and the formulation of new proposition to be tested in future researches.