Organizational Mechanisms for Supply Chain Integration During Product and Process Development

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ABSTRACT0323227 (Parker) Organizational Mechanisms for Supply Chain Integration during Product and Process DevelopmentThe recent trend toward large-scale outsourcing of product design and development is creating a new business challenge: How can firms effectively create and subsequently manage engineering knowledge exchange within supplier networks in environments characterized by rapid technological change and global competition? In particular, as U.S. firms outsource much of their design work, a new concern arises, similar to that raised over two decades ago when imports from Asia became common. Namely, how might U.S. firms organize themselves to survive and prosper even as they "hollow out" by becoming integrators of the work performed by overseas suppliers?Some leading firms have approached the problem by developing a new management and engineering position, the supply chain integrator, to maintain product coherence from concept to customer across often-numerous and fluid firm boundaries. Other firms have attempted to "modularize" their products so that individual suppliers can design their components in relative isolation. Still other firms have pursued integration mechanisms such as relying on industry-wide standards. We propose to investigate supply chain coordination practices across multiple industries that are chosen to have widely varying integration needs. We focus on outsourcing during product and process development because integration needs during development work are likely to be especially high. We ask the following questions: (1) For those elements of product and process development that are outsourced, which practices, novel and otherwise, are employed to support integration across firm boundaries? (2) Does the relative frequency of these mechanisms differ across industries? (3) What are these mechanisms' perceived effectiveness? (4) For those firms that employ dedicated supply chain integration personnel, are there particular skills that appear to make these personnel more effective?