Research on Supplier Collaborative Product Development Mechanism under Condition of Manufacturing Outsourcing

Abstract

The pressure of financial turmoil and global competition drive domestic manufacturers to seek additional profit space besides low-cost labor and raw materials so that they could gain more competitive strength than the other companies in the world. The article maintains that in the manufacturing outsourcing environment domestic manufacturers could effectively reduce cost, shorten R&D cycle time and improve product quality in the manner of collaborative product development with outsourcing suppliers. With supply chain management and synergy theory, the article makes analysis of the definition for supplier collaboration, and then summarizes main activities of collaborative product development including specification, concept design, detail design and product design. Meanwhile, collaborative product development shall satisfy 6 key preconditions. Based on this, the article brings forwards the mechanism of collaborative product development, which is concerned with 5 phased key activities and collaborative manner from customer requirement to initial operational testing. Eventually, predict that collaborative mechanism need to be further analyzed under industry background From the beginning of the 21st century, the variation of macroscopic and microscopic environment that the global industrial field has faced was far fiercer and much more difficult to forecast than ever before. Now mass manufacture can only be accomplished by close cooperate with outsourcing partners, because of the new globalized manufacture network is becoming more and more digitized, decentralized, virtualized, intellectualized and agile. In last few decades, Chinese production has won innumerable outsourcing orders by the advantage in low cost and flexibility, which built a solid foundation of the trade surplus of China. However, in the past two years, because of the financial crisis, RMB appreciation, prices of raw material shy rocketed, and the rigorous quality and service requirement which customers always asked, the profit margin of Chinese manufacturing businesses become much smaller than ever. If these manufacturing companies keep going as before, the existing advantage they have would be soon eroded. Therefore, from ideality of supply collaborative, if these outsourcing companies can build a close relationship actively with their supplies who could significantly affect the total cost of these outsourcing companies, by using the advantages and experience these supplies have, they can design products cooperatively, save cost from the beginning, shot the development stage, and create a significant positive impact on the price and quality of the end products of these outsourcing companies