Abstract
This paper was to investigate, explore and gain an understanding of the factors that enable and support supplier-client collaboration in New Product Development Projects (NPDP) within the South African manufacturing industry. This study was based on two case studies where two NPDP within South African on two different firms were studied. The predominant focus of this report studied the supplier involvement and relationship factors, supplier selection factors, and cultural environment and collaboration factors. The main data used was collected via interviews and internal company documents. The collected data was then analyzed and the outcome provided insight into the factors and relationship between these factors. This study noted that firms can enter into collaboration to accelerate the product development process. This includes enhancing the ability of the firm to respond to key customer needs. Firms can make use of the collaboration advantage where they see a market opportunity where their teams have less to no expertise and skills required to capture the opportunity. In addition, research and development costs stand to be reduced significantly, where the collaboration partner is chosen effectively. This study concludes by seeing it as beneficial to firms to collaborate with their suppliers under proper management.
Highlights
Collaborations with suppliers in New Product Development Projects (NPDP) involves the amalgamation of the buyers and suppliers
Melander [13] attest that a case study is a phenomenon and is recommended for the study of a complex unit with multiple variables especially in trying to understand a phenomenon
A number of employees in the organization: Both companies are in the employment of over 30 000 people worldwide and their suppliers are at an average of 5 000 employees each
Summary
Collaborations with suppliers in NPDP involves the amalgamation of the buyers and suppliers. The buying firm's new product competitiveness is the one that provides support on the supplier's resources. According to Dimancescu and Dwenger [2], many world-class manufacturers have learned to involve suppliers early in the product development process. They understand that leveraging the parent firm’s competencies with those of specialized suppliers is one of the keys to building competitive advantage and adding to the agility of the enterprise. Electronics firms in and around Silicon Valley have pioneered a regional supplier agglomeration [2]
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