Early Supplier Integration Research Articles

WHY AND HOW TO INVOLVE PURCHASING IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT?

In new product development (NPD) firms increasingly have to rely on external expertise from suppliers. However, results of early supplier integration have been found to be ambiguous. This research empirically tests the hypothesis that the participation of professional purchasing agents early on in the supplier integration process plays a decisive role to distinguish successful projects. Our sample gave evidence that early supply management integration positively moderated supplier involvement’s effect on firm success. Hence, firms may benefit from avoiding supplier integration without professional purchasing management. Still, in many firms the procurement department is not yet integrated in NPD processes early on. Our research identifies four measures those firms applied, in which purchasing got fully embedded in the innovation process: top-management support, structural differentiation, explicit processes, and a collaborative corporate culture. This finding can serve as blue print for implementing purchasing integration and therewith improve the success of supplier integration in NPD.

Early supplier integration in the US defense industry

Purpose Each year, the US defense industry outsources nearly $400 bn of domestic goods and services through competitive bids. These procurement activities are quite often complex and specialized in nature because of a highly regulated federal acquisition contracting environment. Ongoing calls to improve supplier management and drive innovation in the defense industry offers an opportunity to adopt Early Supplier Integration (ESI) initiatives that have proven successful in the private sector. This paper identifies critical ESI activities and acquisition practices that the defense industry should adopt to ensure enhanced effectiveness in new product development. Design/methodology/approach Leveraging a conceptual ESI model derived from the research, an in-depth case study of 12 product development projects from a major defense contractor was performed. In the context of project performance, critical ESI activities and moderating effects were assessed. Findings Three key ESI activities have the greatest impact on aggregate project performance: system design involvement, design adjustment opportunities and design for manufacturability/assembly/testability involvement. Use of formal supplier agreements also significantly impacts project performance during the development phase. In addition, project complexity and product team maturity were identified as environment moderators; higher complexity projects tended to negatively moderate the impact of ESI upon performance, and higher team maturity levels tended to positively moderate the impact of ESI upon performance. Originality/value The results provide a sound framework for empirical validation through future quantitative studies and defense industry analyses. In addition, insights and recommendations for interpretation and adaptation of federal acquisition regulations to allow increased utilization of ESI within the defense industry are substantiated.

Potentials and Success Factors of Early Supplier Integration into Own Product Development

Potentials and Success Factors of Early Supplier Integration into Own Product Development

Early Supplier Integration: Assessing Supplier Innovation Ideas

For this paper, a benchmarking analysis was conducted to determine best practices for the evaluation and selection of supplier innovations as part of the purchasing process. All of the case companies analyze the quality of an innovation, but they do not evaluate the supplier proposing the innovation. To further develop these results, a World Cafe workshop was conducted. Two operationally usable checklists were developed to evaluate the characteristics and qualities of both the innovation and the supplier proposing the innovation. Both checklists can be combined into one evaluation-scoring model for supplier innovations. This process helps avoid wasting time attempting to implement “good” ideas from “bad” suppliers or discarding “bad” ideas from “good” suppliers that may still have potential for further development.

The effect of early supplier engagement on social sustainability outcomes in project-based supply chains

This work uses a mixed methods research design to explore how social sustainability outcomes are impacted by early supplier integration and associated strategies for successfully implementing this integration. Much of the literature in the area focuses on environmental factors, while social sustainability factors such as worker and consumer safety have been underrepresented. The results quantitatively illustrate the positive effects on sustainable outcomes of making environmental, health, and safety (EHS) a decision factor earlier in the product lifecycle and of using early supplier involvement as an implementation strategy to accomplish this goal. More importantly, the results show that the suppliers that are being involved early are not always strategic suppliers as one would expect, but are often what are traditionally categorized as leverage suppliers. These results are relevant because they not only align with recent research in sustainable sourcing management, but also have practical implications for organizations trying to be successful in a triple bottom line environment.

Developing a business process for product development

Purpose – Organizations are identifying strategic supply chain relationships as a major source for competitive advantage. Interest in the concept is becoming prevalent in many industries, including new product development within the engineering sector. Collaborative supplier relationships are being used in new product development as a tool to share the development burden and reduce the development life cycle. The purpose of this paper is to develop a business process to act as a roadmap for optimum supplier integration.Design/methodology/approach – An Engineering case organisation (Genco Inc.) is explored to provide an understanding of the extent and timing of supplier involvement, within new product development. Subsequently a high level business process is developed to govern early supplier integration, within a product development phase gate model.Findings – The findings suggest and the business model strives to create a more holistic view of supplier integration; extending the scope beyond the individ...

Early supplier integration: the dual role of purchasing in new product development

Interest in early supplier integration in new product development (NPD) has increased as an open innovation approach has become more common in firms. To support supplier integration, the purchasing function of a firm can assume a new ‘dual’ role: contributing to NPD while also managing overall costs. Previous research has offered few insights into how the purchasing function should best be organised so that it will fulfil this dual role. This paper reports on the results of a consortial benchmarking study in which an industry–academic consortium visited and analysed six best-practice firms. The findings describe how innovative firms organise their purchasing function, distinguishing between ‘advanced sourcing’ and ‘life-cycle sourcing’ units. The results include the tools that these firms use, such as regular innovation meetings with suppliers and technology roadmaps linking firm strategy, innovation strategy and sourcing strategies. The paper also recommends that researchers shift from a narrow focus on a single project to a broader consideration of supplier and organisational issues in NPD.

Opening up the innovation process: towards an agenda

The author reflects on the trends and streams of open innovation. Various perspectives of opening up the innovation process includes: globalization of innovation, early supplier integration, user innovation, and external commercialization and application of technology. Globalization favors open innovation models because they achieve economies of scale more swiftly and promote more powerful standards and dominant designs.

Intelligent agent characterization and uncertainty management with fuzzy set theory: a tool to support early supplier integration

This research performed an analysis of the existing categories for agent classification and characterization. The methodology developed fuzzy set theory based intelligent agents designed to promote integration of suppliers into the early stages of product development. The first stage in the project personified the anticipated agents by giving them roles that correlated with humanistic tendencies or professions. The project produced a multidimensional profile for agents by providing an analysis of three personality traits: aggressiveness, attractiveness, and vulnerability. The value associated with each of these traits is obtained through different functions which consider the degree of anticipated interaction between the agent, other agents, and the external environment. Further, the types of uncertainty associated with decision making are identified and assigned. The personality traits are used to describe the expected behavior of the agent and are assigned at the initiation o f a given task. Conversely, the measures of uncertainty are invoked at the completion of the task to provide a series of metrics related to the quality of information or task performed. The developed generic fuzzy intelligent agent model was programmed into two of the types of agents using JAVA. The agents successfully communicated with each other while permitting examination of the uncertainty. The result of the methodology is the creation of a frame that can be used to develop multiple fuzzy agents. Further, this research presents one of the first instantiations of a fuzzy agent. Finally, a hypothetical application of these agents is proposed to support architectural innovation in product development. This example promotes early supplier integration into the product development phase through the use of electronic communication and management of the interactions through intelligent agents. The details of computer programming are left for presentation in a succeeding article.

Architectural innovation in product development through early supplier integration

The paper explains how an important opportunity exists to pro‐actively integrate suppliers at an early stage in the concept exploration and definition stages of product development. Research suggests that the concept of architectural innovation can be extended so that product features are matched with the associated specialized technical skills of partners in the development team.In addition to the establishment of integrated product teams, key enablers include: long‐term commitment to suppliers; co‐location; joint responsibility for design and configuration control; seamless information flow; and retaining flexibility in the definition of system configuration. Important contributing factors include: supplier‐capability‐enhancing investments; target costing; and incentive mechanisms. To promote innovative outcomes in military and government programmes, attention is drawn to the importance of governments championing closely‐knit customer‐supplier relationships.Firms can build enduring competitive strength by leveraging the specialized knowledge bases of their supplier networks. Two case‐studies provide lessons to improve current approaches to the creation of long‐term partnerships, or strategic alliances, with suppliers.