Supplier integration for new product developments : antecedents for supplier integration in modular product designs

Abstract

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) increasingly integrate supplier resources in new product developments (NPD) to overcome bottlenecks of resource and to create competitive advantages. At the same time, OEMs react to the new market challenges by implementing modular product designs. Despite the significant relevance, the area of supplier integration in NPD has not received as much attention as the analysis of customer integration in the NPD process. In view of that, this dissertation looks at antecedents like supplier characteristics that facilitate the integration of suppliers in NPD with special emphasize on modular product designs. In detail, five research papers are presented which are connected by a strong scientific relation. Each paper takes a different angle on the topic supplier integration while relational view represent the main theoretical lense (Dyer & Singh, 1998). The first paper examines the positive relation between supplier integration in NPD and performance of the buying firm. The second paper investigates sub-supplier integration by first-tier suppliers and the resulting effects on supplier innovativeness in buyer-supplier collaborations with the help of dyadic data from suppliers and buyers. Third, a qualitative analysis detects supplier characteristics for module developments by looking at three cases from different four wheel vehicle industries. In the following, the identified supplier characteristics are tested empirically in regards to joint developments between buyers-suppliers (grey-box) and self-conducted supplier developments (black-box). The last paper of this dissertation sheds light on the interplay of product modularity and technical knowledge in relation to interfirm collaborations between suppliers and buyers. Over-all, this dissertation enhances current knowledge concerning successful supplier-buyer collaborations by providing insights about organizational aspects to facilitate supplier integration, the role of sub-suppliers for supplier innovativeness and essential supplier characteristics for module developments in accordance to different supplier integration approaches.