Strategic outsourcing: status and prospects in global product development processes

Abstract

Nowadays, firms are realising that being alone in the product development process does not provide them with any differentiation in their production lines and is causing the emergence of a widespread moving towards the phenomenon of outsourcing. The objectives of such an approach are not only cost-effectiveness and focusing on core competition, but also firms are adopting outsourcing to obtain a distinct marketing edge and to score over their competitors. In this paper, the overall strategic views of outsourcing in manufacturing industries are critically analysed and discussed together with the potentials and pitfalls of this emerging approach.