مدل جدیدی از مشارکت مشتری و تأمین کننده در توسعه محصول جدید

This paper proposes a new model of customer–supplier relationships with special interest in their new product development processes. The partnership model includes the following four types of distinctive index: 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 bidding party or parties with the most promising contract indices are considered further for awarding the contract.

One of the prevailing findings from both Concurrent Engineering and Supply Chain Management research has been that great potential benefits can be achieved by both the customers and suppliers if they are involved in the new product development (NPD) process as early as possible [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5]. The other side of the findings reveals that it has been a great challenge to implement this early supplier involvement (ESI) in NPD in industry [6], [7] and [8]. Efforts are being made to facilitate the implementation. This research investigates into the two topical aspects. One is a customer–supplier interface model that is practically intuitive and yet theoretically thorough. The other is how this method can be incorporated into a web-based system on the Internet to enable better contact between the customers and suppliers. This paper proposes a new model of customer–supplier relationships with special interest in their NPD processes. The partnership model includes the following four types of distinctive index: satisfaction index (SI), flexibility index (FI), risk index (RI), and confidence index (CI). 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 bidding party or parties with the most promising contract indices are considered further for awarding the contract.

This paper has proposed a methodology and a proof-of-the-concept prototype web-based system for brokering and establishing partnerships between the customer and suppliers in NPD. The partnership model uses the extent to which both the customer requirements and the supplier capabilities overlap or mismatch to assess the potential for their future collaboration. The customer can use the model to calculate three types of partnership or contract indices, i.e. SI, FI and RI, for all the bidding suppliers. The supplier(s) with the most promising partnership indices are considered further for awarding the contract. In addition, supplier performance can be recorded in the system database. The difference between the actual performance and contract terms can be converted into what is called CIs. CIs can then be incorporated into the partnership indices as weighting factors. When the CI of a supplier is maintained at a high level for a sufficient period of time, a long-term partnership may be considered with this supplier. The proposed methodology is implemented and demonstrated in a prototype web-based computer system, named WeBid, on the Internet. The system is therefore a web site that provides facilities to encourage initial contacts, facilitate preliminary negotiations, and enable partnership evaluation. The method is intuitive and the implementation is straightforward. However, it remains a great challenge to incorporate them into, and thus to improve, industrial practices in ESI in NPD.