 Collaborate With CustomersDesign for Mass CustomizationDesign for ManufactureDesign for Quality & ReliabilityImplement Fast Time-to-Market TechniquesCollaborate with Suppliers in Development |
Lean companies
- Consider suppliers as an extension of their own engineering and manufacturing activities
- Have suppliers provide specialized capabilities while their company focuses on its core competencies.
- Involve suppliers at the inception of a product development project, at the conception stage
- Include suppliers in material and vendor selections, prototypes, and qualification and pilot runs
- Ensure that suppliers understand their technology roadmap and that they understand the suppliers' roadmaps and are taking advantage of them
- Understand their own core competencies and those of their suppliers and work together to take advantage of both
- Provide for real-time written communications of all important information flowing between their company and its suppliers
Traditional companies
- Establish an adversarial relationship with the supplier regarding costs, deliveries, and quality
- Assume that the supplier can produce what you design
- Assume that the supplier can meet very short lead-times if you exert enough pressure
- Assume that involving the supplier in design will only slow you down
- Assume that the supplier cannot contribute any useful ideas at the conceptual stage of the project
- Assume that you know everything the supplier knows about the goods he produces
Benefits of Lean
- Speeds time-to-market by reducing mistakes and using the resources of the supplier in solving design problems
- Takes full advantage of the supplier's expertise
- Allows you to identify tasks that the supplier can do better than you and shift them to him, freeing resources and speeding development
- Ensures that you do not overlook a budding technology in your industry
- Gives the supplier ownership and responsibility in the outcome of the project
- Gives the supplier confidence to give you his best pricing and delivery schedules