Supplier involvement in design: a comparative survey of automotive suppliers in the USA, UK and Japan

Abstract

This paper examines supplier involvement in design based on survey data from 145 Japanese, 189 US and 87 UK automotive component suppliers. First, cross‐national differences in the degree of supplier involvement are examined. Second, regression analysis is used to identify factors which predict high or low levels of supplier involvement in design. Third, the effects of supplier involvement in product development on the degree to which products are designed for manufacturability are assessed. The data show that, contrary to much of the literature that suggests the highest levels of supplier involvement in design are in Japan, suppliers in the USA and UK are more likely to report greater influence on product design decisions, earlier involvement and more frequent communications with customers about design. Moreover, manufacturing planning and design begin later, as a proportion of the development cycle, in Japan than in the USA and the UK. Regression analysis shows that involving suppliers early and giving them influence over design is associated with greater contributions of suppliers to cost reduction, quality improvement and design for manufacturability. Suppliers are given the greatest influence and communication is most intensive for the design of complex subsystems and new designs, and this does not vary by country.

New Product Development in an Emerging Economy: Analysing the Role of Supplier Involvement Practices by Using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo Technique

“…To that purpose, this empirical study presents data and findings from a survey conducted in the manufacturing sector in Malaysia. While studies of supplier involvement in new product development (NPD) have already taken place in generic terms related to innovation processes, fewer have taken the individual project as a starting point. Taking individual NPD projects as a starting point [2,33,34] could lead to more meaningful answers on performance than can be found by discussing this in more generic terms of relationships with suppliers, as is more commonly done [3,6,8,35,36]; ultimately, that should lead to less bias in the responses, allowing us to draw more definite conclusions. An instrument utilised in the developed economies (developed by Jayaram) [2] was used here to ascertain the validity of the findings in an emerging economy.…”

“…In addition, some other studies have confirmed the benefits of supplier involvement. Liker et al [33] found that early supplier involvement in automobile suppliers led to cost saving and improved product quality and design. Carr and Pearson's study [3] showed that early supplier involvement had a positive influence on firms' financial performance.…”

Knowledge sharing, commitment and opportunism in new product development

“…Inter-firm development teams require extensive coordination among them than do traditional intra-firm development teams. They have to present their unique difficulties and to develop commitment and trust with their partner companies (Ragatz et al, 1997;Liker et al, 1998).…”

Developing an ideation method to be used in cross-functional inter-organizational teams by means of action design research

“…The trigger for the present study was the insight that, as the different functions involved during the life cycle of railway products were spread out over different actors as a result of deregulation, special efforts were needed to achieve a holistic picture of a product when developing it. Previous research has shown examples of both the customer's (Hannola et al 2009) and the subcontractor's (Liker et al 1998) importance for the introduction of improvements. By involving representatives from several actors when ideating, more viewpoints on the product to be developed would be shared and thus a better product would eventually be designed.…”