Refreshing collaborative product development: a case study on Taiwan's IT industry

Abstract

With the trend of keener competition nowadays, qualified Original Design Manufacturing (ODM) players must be able to take charge of product design and development and integrate value chain members, such as vendors and suppliers of key parts, to cowork seamlessly in Collaborative Product Development (CPD) processes. Therefore, this research aims to figure out why and how ODM players refresh CPD, so the authors chose an ODM player in Taiwan's Information Technology (IT) industry as the object of the case study. By means of expert interviews, panel discussions and participative observations lasting for a year, the authors penetrate into the dynamics and increase the understanding of CPD processes. The paper demonstrates the essences of refreshment such as the business model, the operations model and IT the model. Moreover, the CPD processes of RX150T are clearly exhibited so that the readers can clearly understand the scenario. Afterwards, the authors shed light on the issues and enablers, identify the Key Successful Factors (KSF) and summarise the positive effects. Such a case study wishes to provide insights for practitioners of CPD and be a useful referral for ODM players to adjust their implementation of CPD.