ادغام معیارهای طراحی درون فرآیند انتخاب تامین کننده اولیه

It has been found from the contemporary research in the fields of supply chain management and concurrent engineering that significant benefits can be achieved if suppliers are involved in product development. However, recent investigations in manufacturing industries have revealed that early supplier involvement in the design process is not widely practiced. One issue is the lack of an appropriate customer–supplier interface to assess the suitability of suppliers with reference to design criteria. This paper proposes a mechanism for evaluating supplier involvement during product development. The assessment tool includes four types of distinctive indices to measure supplier involvement in the design process, namely: Satisfaction Index, Flexibility Index, Risk Index, and Confidence Index. These indices measure the extent to which both the customer requirements and the supplier capabilities match or mismatch and therefore reflect the potential or risk of signing a project contract. The proposed methodology is discussed within a multinational telecommunications company and preliminary analysis indicates that the approach provides an effective mechanism for selecting suppliers involved in the product development process.

Over the last decade, shortened product life cycles, the globalisation of markets and the rapid rate of technological change have led to an increased focus on the product development process. Competitive pressures are forcing companies to consider strategies which reduce costs and compress time between each stage of the value chain (Batchelor, 1997). In such a competitive environment, suppliers are an increasingly important resource for customers. This is further emphasised by the fact that on a worldwide basis purchases account for over 50 percent of the cost of goods sold. At the same time, suppliers have a large and direct impact on the cost, quality, technology and time-to-market of new products. Effective integration of suppliers into the value chain is an important factor for customers in achieving the necessary improvements to remain competitive. Linked to these changes is the trend towards companies adopting more collaborative relations with their key suppliers. Companies are now pursuing more intensive and interactive relationships with their suppliers, collaborating in new product development, integrating key business processes and cross-functional information sharing on a range of issues (McIvor et al., 1997). This article focuses on the product development process and in evaluating potential suppliers who would be involved in making design decisions. Firstly, an overview of the changes that have taken place in relation to the supply chain and the product development process will be described. Secondly, examples of supplier involvement in product development will be outlined along with the potential benefits. Thirdly, a supplier evaluation tool is proposed to assist in operationalising the assessment of suppliers against design criteria. Finally, case study data is presented illustrating the application of the selection methodology.

This article has investigated the management of inter-firm product design and development expertise and the role played by purchasing in selecting appropriate suppliers. The involvement of suppliers in product design and development activities increases the need for effective coordination mechanisms and appropriate tools, as higher levels of interdependence are required between the focal firm and suppliers of design and manufacturing expertise. An assessment tool has been proposed that can be used for evaluating suppliers involved in product development. The methodology considers the extent to which both the customer requirements and the supplier capabilities overlap or mismatch to assess the potential for their future collaboration. It is currently being evaluated within a multinational telecommunications company, where due to increased levels of outsourcing assessing suppliers against design criteria is essential. The preliminary results indicate that there have been a number of benefits to both buyer and supplier organisations by establishing clearly defined design criteria. This supports the view of Culley et al. (1999) of the need to more explicitly establish design criteria in order to ensure the selection of appropriate suppliers. The supplier interface management activity adopted by the Company supports the case study findings of Wynstra et al. (1999) with regard to the development of what they term process and product level criteria. The standard criteria are used across all product development activities involving supplier design input, whereas the technical criteria will vary since they represent the specification of the component being provided by the supplier. However, with regard to the frequency of evaluation, Wynstra et al. indicated that assessment at the process level would be on a regular basis, whereas the product level would be more ad hoc. Discussions with the procurement team in the Company indicated that such an approach was probably not suitable when dealing with high value components, such as the ASICs described in the case study, given that the cost of such components represents 15% of the cost of the PCB. Consequently, for such high value components, the Company felt that process and product-level criteria should both be measured periodically. The case study outlined a three-stage methodology with regard to the selection of suppliers during the product development process. The main reason for this approach was that the Company wanted to explicitly focus on design criteria as a mechanism for improving the competitiveness of the design supply base. With regard to other buying organisations they may wish to incorporate design criteria into their existing supplier selection methodologies. For example, a firm may be using supplier selection techniques that apply, for example, AHP or Outranking (De Boer et al., 1998 and De Boer et al., 2001). In these circumstances the design methodology described assists in operationalising the design criteria and identifying the four index values. One or more of these indices may then be included as criteria in the overall supplier selection tool. In addition, the four indices relating to satisfaction, flexibility, risk and confidence may also prove useful in dealing with specific supplier selection situations, particularly with regard to uncertainty. For example, a number of authors have suggested the use of fuzzy set theory (FST) to model uncertainty and imprecision with regard to supplier choice (de Boer et al., 2001). FST is a mathematical technique that can take account of vagueness and ambiguity. However, Holt (1998) suggests that FST is complex and would be difficult for the user community to comprehend and understand the rationale for the output results. The indices developed in this paper could provide a more pragmatic and intuitive approach to dealing with data integrity. The methodology developed has undergone preliminary evaluation and a more in-depth assessment is to be conducted once sufficient historical data can be collected. The intention is to review the validity and objectivity of the supplier selection decision tool using the criteria suggested by de Boer and van der Wegen (2003) and Dowlatshahi (1998). This consists of issues related to complexity-fit (e.g. data availability and level of uncertainty) and cost/benefit (improved insight and usefulness). The validation approach will allow comparisons to be made with the supplier selection tool developed and the traditional approach used by the Company to assess design input. The tool is currently being used at one strategic business unit within the Company. The Company intends to widen the scope of the project to include other design intensive business units and would allow a comparative assessment to be conducted. With regard to future work and as a further extension of identifying relevant design criteria the Company is intending to introduce an assessment of suppliers’ technology roadmaps. Technology roadmaps involve determining the constituent technologies required to develop new products. In order to obtain maximum strategic benefit from the integration of the supplier, both parties need to share objectives and have complementary future technology plans. The technology roadmap describes the performance, cost and technology characteristics of future products each company plans to develop/introduce over a specified time horizon (Handfield et al., 1999). For example, with regard to ASICs the Company is considering dynamic design criteria that take into account the ability to ‘future-proof’ design concepts. In terms of design criteria a technology roadmap would specify the capability required across various time horizons. In terms of the example outlined in Table 3, expert opinion indicates that wafer size is currently around 25 cm, but should have increased by 2005/2006 to 30 cm. With regard to the number of gates provided it is currently 5 million, but is anticipated to be 10 million by 2005/2006. Technology roadmaps that outline the evolution of the supplier's capability in a technology are a crucial part of the interaction process between the design/procurement function and the supplier. Supplier involvement is crucial due to the rapid changes occurring in these technologies and the constant focus on re-design for cost reduction and greater component functionality throughout the life of the product. The Company also views the supplier's capacity and flexibility as critical issues, since in many cases the vendor is involved both in the design and manufacturing processes. The Company is currently examining what kind of agreements it has with suppliers, with a view to providing more depth to the current criteria in order to ensure that vendors have the ability to increase output quickly. Within the telecommunications industry product development times are measured in months and companies are continuously investigating ways of compressing the time to market in order to enhance their speed of response to customers (Keynote Report, 2002). One suggestion that is currently being investigated and that is used across the telecommunications industry is to specify the flexibility requirements in terms of the degree of volume capability. For example, the Company is currently negotiating with suppliers to provide flexibility requirements amounting to: 25% up in 5 weeks, 50% in 10 weeks, 100% in 15 weeks; and it is anticipated that these will be incorporated into the evaluation process. The research presented in this paper provides a number of important contributions. Firstly, it identifies the need to define design-related criteria for supplier involvement during the product development process. This has tended to be done from a generic perspective without considering the specific requirements of the buying organisation. Secondly, a methodology is proposed which takes into consideration the ability of suppliers to provide solutions beyond the requirements specified by the customer and provides a mechanism for measuring the degree of uncertainty or risk associated with using a supplier. Finally, a preliminary evaluation has been conducted and this has indicated that for high value-added items, design criteria should consist of standardised factors used on all projects and a second set of measures specifically related to the specification of the product/component group being evaluated.