Systematic Improvement of Supplier Integration within the Product Development Process

Initially, companies have mainly optimized processes in production and logistics. Now, an improvement in the Product Development Process (PDP) takes place more and more. For this reason, companies use lean approaches to make their processes more effective and efficient. To reach this goal, the principles of Lean Manufacturing have been transferred to the PDP. In the current situation, many companies have recognized the numerous potentials of Product Development (PD), which can be realized in companies with the so-called 'Lean Development' (LD). Apart from these advantages, a major problem can be identified: On the one hand, the development process is an increasingly important core process in companies, but on the other hand, companies are decreasingly the owners of these processes. A shift in development activities takes place towards the suppliers. As a result of this shift, suppliers become a very important factor for the success of the PDP and the entire company. This current situation necessitates a systematic integration of suppliers within PD. Existing management approaches for a systematic integration of suppliers have substantial deficits. Based on this research gap, findings were generated as part of a study and a comprehensive analysis in the context of a research project. The results confirm that numerous savings can be achieved for the factors development quality, time, and costs. Business cases show, however, significant deficits in the long-term focus of supplier relationships. In order to improve this issue, the integration requires an extensive analysis of the current business organization and a restructuring of development processes. A selection of the results and findings of Supplier Management and future fields of action are presented in this publication.